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SCI LIBRARY

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