The Correspondence of Thomas Jefferson
By Subject
EDUCATION / NATIONAL UNIVERSITY
I am indebted to you . . . for your letter by Mr. Correa, and the
benefit it procured me of his acquaintance. He was so kind as to pay
me a visit at Monticello, which enabled me to see for myself that he
was still beyond all the eulogies with which yourself and other
friends had preconized him. I learned beyond any one I had before met
with, good, modest and of the simplest manners, the idea of losing him
again filled me with regret, and how much did I lament that we could
not place him at the head of that that institution which I have so
long nourished the hope of seeing established in my country, and
towards which you had so kindly contributed your luminous views. But,
my friend, that institution is still in embryo as you left it, and
from the complexion of our popular legislature and the narrow and
niggardly views of ignorance courting the suffrage of ignorance to
obtain a seat in it, I see little prospect of such an establishment
until the national government shall be authorized to take it up and
form it on the comprehensive basis of all the useful sciences.
to Dupont de Nemours, 29 November 1813
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