Daily Kennebec Journal

Miscellany.

JEFFERSON AS STUDENT AND LOVER.

During Mr. Jefferson's law course of five years he usually spent the summer months at home, at Shadwell, where the rest of the family continued to reside. The systematic industry of his college life continued. Notwithstanding the time given to company, he contrived to pass nearly twice the usual number of hours of law students in his studies. He placed a clock in his bed room, and as soon as he could distinguish its hands in the gray of the summer morning he rose and commenced his labors. In winter, he rose punctually at five. His hour of retiring in summer, in the country, was nine—in the winter at ten. At Shadwell, his studies were very little interrupted by company. He usually took a gallop on horseback during the day, and at twilight walked to the top of Monticello. An hour or two given to the society of his family, and the favorite violin, completed the list of interruptions, and still left fourteen or fifteen hours for study and reading.

With Mr. Jefferson, the lover succeeded the schoolboy in the due and time honored order, as laid down by the "melancholy Jacques." The only record of this affair is to be found in a series of letters addressed by him to his friend, John Page, commencing immediately after he left college, and extending, at intervals, through the two succeeding years. These are to be found at length in the Congress edition of his works, and also in his life by Professor Tucker. They possess some interest, perhaps, in relation to their subject matter, but most, as the earliest specimens of their author's epistolary writing which have been preserved. Though they display some of that easy command of language—that "running pen"—for which he was afterwards so celebrated, they exhibit no peculiar grace of style, or maturity of thought. Perhaps, however, these would scarcely be expected in the careless, off-hand effusion of boyish intimacy. It causes a smile to see the future statesman "sighing like furnace" in a first love: concealing, after the approved fashion of student life, the name of his mistress under awkward Latin puns and Greek anagrams, by burying a secret which the world, of course, was supposed to have a vast interest in discovering; delightedly describing happy dances with his "Belinda" in the Apollo (that room of the Raleigh tavern where we shall soon find him acting so different a part;) vowing the customary despairing vow, that "if Belinda will not accept his service, it shall never be offered to another;" and so on to the end of the chapter—in the well beaten track of immediate prescription. The object of his attachment was a Miss Rebecca Burwell, (called Belinda, as a pet name, or by way of concealment,) whom tradition speaks of as more distinguished for beauty than cleverness.

His proposals seem to have been clogged with the condition that he must be absent for two or three years in foreign travel before marriage. He several times expressed this design, specifying England, France Spain, Italy, Egypt, and a return through the northern British provinces in America, as his proposed route. Why he gave this up does not appear. Whether for this, or because her preferences lay in a different direction, Miss Burwell somewhat abruptly married another man in 1774.

Mr. Jefferson was generally, however, rather a favorite with the other sex, and not without reason. His appearance was engaging. His face, though angular, and far from beautiful, beamed with intelligence, with benevolence and with the cheerful vivacity of a happy, hopeful spirit. His complexion was ruddy, and delicately fair; his reddish, chestnut hair luxuriant and silken. His full, deep-set eyes, the prevailing color of which was a light hazel, (or flecks of hazel on a groundwork of gray) were peculiarly expressive, and mirrored, as the clear lake mirrors the cloud, every motion which was passing through his mind. He stood six feet two and a half inches in height, and, though very slim at this period, his form was erect and sinewy, and his movements displayed elasticity and vigor. He was an expert musician, a fine dancer, a dashing rider, and there was no manly exercise in which he could not play his part. His manners were unusually graceful, but simple and cordial.

His conversation already possessed no inconsiderable share of that charm which, in after years, was so much extolled by friends, and to which enemies attributed so seductive an influence in molding the young and the wavering to his political views. There was a frankness, earnestness and cordiality in its tone—a deep sympathy with humanity—a confidence in man, and a sanguine hopefulness in his destiny, which irresistibly won upon the feelings not only of the ordinary hearer, but of those grave men whose commerce with the world had perhaps led them to form less glowing estimates of it—of such men as the scholar-like Small, the sagacious Wythe, the courtly and gifted Fauquier. Mr. Jefferson's temper was gentle, kindly and forgiving. If it naturally had any thing of that warmth which is the usual concomitant of affections and sympathies so ardent, and it no doubt had, it had been subjugated by habitual control. Yet under its even placidity, there were not wanting those indications of calm self reliance and courage which all instinctively recognize and respect. There is not an instance on record of his having been engaged in a personal rencontre, of his having suffered a personal indignity. Possessing the accomplishments, he avoided the vices, of the young Virginia gentry of the day, and a class of habits which, if not vices themselves, were too often made the preludes to them. He never gambled. To avoid the importunities which were generally accompanied with betting, he never learned to distinguish one card from another: he was moderate in the enjoyments of the table; to strong drinks he had an aversion which rarely yielded to any circumstances; his mouth was unpolluted by oaths or tobacco! Though he speaks of enjoying "the victory of a favorite horse," and the "death of the fox," he never put but one horse in training to run never ran but a single race, and he very rarely joined in the pleasant excitement he knew it to be too pleasant for the aspiring student of the chase. With such qualities of mind and character, with the favor of powerful friends and relatives, and even of vice royalty, to urge him onward, Mr. Jefferson was not a young man to be lightly regarded by the young or old of either sex. Randall's Life of Jefferson.