peared in the United States, contained, August 18, 1804, among eulogies of the poems of Burns, and burlesques upon the early lyrical effusions of Wordsworth, an imaginary diary, supposed to have been picked up near the White House in the previous February. In this the President was made to say: "Ordered my horse-never ride with a servant-looks proud-mob doesn't like it must gull the boobies. Adams wouldn't bend sowould rather lose his place-knew nothing of the world." In another place he describes himself as meeting a countryman who took him for a Virginia overseer, and who talked politics. The countryman asked him to name one man of real character in the Democratic party. The President, after some stammering, suggested Jefferson, on which the countryman burst into a broad laugh, and asked him to enumerate his virtues-would he begin with his religion, chastity, courage, or honesty?-on which the President indignantly rode away. "Had he been as little as Sammy H. Smith," he adds, "I think I should have struck him." Ever since Jefferson's career as Governor of Virginia, the charge of personal cowardice had been unreasonably familiar. The fictitious diary also contains some indecorous references to a certain "black Sally," a real or imaginary personage of that day whose companionship was thought discreditable to the President; also to the undoubted personal slovenliness of the Chief Magistrate--a point in which he showed an almost studied antagonism to the scrupulous proprieties of Washington. When Mr. Merry, the newly appointed British ambassador, went in official costume to be presented to the President at an hour previously appointed, he found himself, by his own narrative, "introduced to a man as the President of the United States, not merely in an undress, but actually standing in slippers down at the heels, and both pantaloons, coat, and underclothes indicative of utter slovenliness and indifference to appearance, and in a state of negligence actually studied." The minister went away with the very natural conviction that the whole scene was prepared and intended as an insult, not to himself, but to the sovereign whom he represented. Mr. Merry's inference was probably quite unjust. A man may be habitually careless about his costume without meaning. any harm by it; and the pre-eminent demagogue of the French Revolution, Robespierre, always appeared exquisitely dressed, and wore a fresh bouquet every day. Yet all these points of costume or propriety were then far weightier matters than we can now conceive. The habits of the last century in respect to decorum were just receding; men were—for better or worseceasing to occupy themselves about personal externals, and the customary suit of solemn black was only just coming into vogue. The old régime was dying, and its disappearance was as conspicuous in England as in France, in America as in England. This is easily illustrated. If we were to read in some old collection of faded letters a woman's animated description of a country visit paid to one who seemed the counterpart of Addison's Sir Roger de Coverley, we should naturally assume that the date and address of the letter must be very far away in space and time. Suppose that the narrator should tell us of a fine country-house surrounded by lofty elms forming two avenues, the one leading to the high-road, the other to the village church. There are family portraits in the hall, a bookcase containing the first edition of the Spectator, and a buffet of old plate and rare china. The guest remains over Sunday, and her host, wearing wig and cocked hat and red cloak, escorts her down the avenue of elms through the rural church-yard to the village church. At every step they pass villagers who make profound obeisance, and at the conclusion of the service the whole congregation remains. standing until this ancient gentleman and his friends have passed down the broad aisle. Who would not fancy this a scene from some English hamlet in the days of Queen Anne? Yet it all took place in the present century, and in the quiet village of Harvard, Massachusetts, little more than thirty miles from Boston, and now only noted as the abode of a little Shaker community, and the scene of Howells's "Undiscovered Country." The narrator was the late Mrs. Josiah Quincy, and her host was Henry Bromfield, elder brother of the well-known benefactor of the Boston Athenæum. He was simply a "survival" of the old way of living. He spoke of State Street as King Street, and Summer Street as Seven-star Lane, and his dress and manners. were like his phrases. Such survivals were still to be found, here and there all over the country, at the precise time when Jefferson became President, and shocked Mr. Merry with his morning slippers, and Mr. Sullivan by opening his doors to all the world. For the rest, Jefferson's way of living in Washington exhibited a profuse and rather slovenly hospitality, which at last left him deeply in debt. He kept open house, had eleven servants (slaves) from his plantation, besides a French cook and steward and an Irish coachman. His long dining-room was crowded every day, according to one witness, who tested its hospitality for sixteen days in succession; it was essentially a bachelor establishment, he being then a widower, and we hear little of ladies among its visitors. There was no etiquette at these great dinners; they sat down at four and talked till midnight. The city of Washington was still a frontier settlement, in that phase of those outposts when they consist of many small cabins and one hotel at which everybody meets. The White House was the hotel; there was no "society" anywhere else, because no other dwelling had a drawing-room large enough to receive it. Pennsylvania Avenue was still an abyss of yellow mud, on which nobody could walk, and where carriages were bemired. Gouverneur Morris, of New York, described Washington as the best city in the world for a future. residence. "We want nothing here," he said, "but houses, cellars, kitchens, well-informed men, amiable women, and other little trifles of this kind, to make our city perfect." Besides new manners, the new President urged new measures; he would pay off the public debt, which was very well, though the main instrument by which it was to be paid was the Treasury system created by Hamilton. But to aid in doing this he would reduce the army and navy to their lowest point, which was not so well, although he covered this reduction in the case of the army by calling it-in a letter to Nathaniel Macon-"a chaste reformation." He pardoned those convicted under the Alien and Sedition laws, and he procured the removal of those officers appointed by President Adams at the last moment, and called "Midnight Judges," this being accomplished by a repeal of the law creating them. This repeal was an act which seemed to the Federalists unconstitutional, and its passage was their last great defeat. Under Jefferson's leadership the period of fourteen years of residence necessary for naturalization was reduced to five years. He sent Lewis and Clark to penetrate the vast regions west of the Mississippi, and encouraged Astor to found a settlement upon the Pacific coast. The Constitution was so amended as to provide for the Presidential election in its present form. The President's hostility could not touch the Bank of the United States, as established by Hamilton, for it was to exist by its charter till 1811; the excise law was early discontinued; the tariff question had not yet become serious, the tendency being, however, to an increase of duties. Slavery was occasionally discussed by pamphleteers. The officials of the civil service had not grown to be a vast army: instead of fifty thousand, there were then but five thou sand, and of those Jefferson removed but thirty-nine. Yet even this mild degree of personal interference was severely criticised, for party bitterness had not abated. Violent squibs and handbills were still published; peaceful villages were divided against themselves. The late Miss Catharine Sedgwick, whose father was Speaker of the House of Representatives, says that in a New England town, where she lived in childhood, the gentry who resided at one end were mainly Federalists, and the poorer citizens at the other end were Democrats. The travelling agent for the exchange of political knowledge was a certain aged horse, past service, and turned out to graze in the village street. He would be seen peacefully pacing one way in the morning, his sides plastered with Jeffersonian squibs, and he would return at night with these effaced by Federalist manifestoes. Handbills and caricatures have alike disappeared; but one of the best memorials of the Jeffersonian side of the controversy is to be found in a very spicy correspondence carried on in 1807 between John Adams and Mercy Warren, and first published in the centennial volume of the Massachusetts Historical Society. Mercy Warren was a woman of rare ability and char |