“ of the attentions which I received from you at Paris.”

Jefferson acknowledged the gift from Philadelphia on March 10, 1793: “ I am to acknolege the receipt of your favor of Oct. 1. and of the valuable present which accompanied it. I reserve to myself the pleasure of perusing it when I shall be in a situation to do it without interruption from public business, which situation I place at no great distance. the subject of your book is interesting, and I am sure I shall find the manner of treating it both interesting & instructive . . . ”

A copy of this book was supplied to Jefferson by Milligan on May 6, 1815, in fulfilment of an order sent by the former on December 1, 1814, for the replacement of books sold to Congress, but missing from his library. Milligan purchased it from William F. Gray, Fredericksburg, price $ 5.00, and billed it to Jefferson for the same amount on July 31, receipted August 11.

It seems probable therefore that this copy is the replacement, and not the original gift from the author. The presentation letter, quoted above (endorsed by Jefferson with the date of its receipt, Jan. 31, 93) is pasted down on the fly-leaf of the book. The name T. Jefferson is written at the bottom left hand corner.

On April 26, 1824, Jefferson wrote to Stewart to request his help in the selection of professors for the University of Virginia, and mentioned this gift. The draft of this letter reads in part: “ It is now 35. years since I had the great pleasure of becoming acquainted with you in Paris . . . at a subsequent period you were so kind as to recall me to your recollection on the publicñ of your invaluable book on the Philosophy of the human mind a copy of which you sent me, and I have been happy to see it become the text book of most of our colleges & academies, and pass thro’ several reimpressions in the US . . . ”

In a letter to John Adams written from Monticello on March 14, 1820, Jefferson recounted the story of his friendship with Stewart and expressed his opinion of his ability: “ . . . it was after you left Europe that Dugald Stuart, concerning whom you enquire, and L ^d. Dare, second son of the Marquis of Lansdowne came to Paris. they brought me a letter from L ^d. Wycombe whom you knew. I became immediately intimate with Stuart, calling mutually on each other and almost daily, during their stay at Paris, which was of some months . . . Stuart is a great man, and among the most honest living. I have heard nothing of his dying at top, as you suppose . . . I consider him and Tracy as the ablest Metaphysicians living; by which I mean Investigators of the thinking faculty of man. Stuart seems to have given it’s natural history, from facts and observations; Tracy it’s modes of action and deduction, which he calls Logic, and Ideology . . . ”

Two years earlier, on January 9, 1818, in a letter to Robert Walsh, Jefferson had similarly expressed himself: “ . . . I place him [i.e. Destutt de Tracy] & Dugald Stewart so much in a line, that I can decide no more than that they are the two greatest men in that line at present known to the world . . . ”

Dugald Stewart, 1753-1828, Scottish philosopher, was introduced to Jefferson by Benjamin Vaughan, in a letter written from London on June 6, 1788. Vaughan’s letter gave a full account of Stewart’s activities as a professor at Edinburgh, and explained that he was well convinced that Jefferson would “ have considerable satisfaction in his acquaintance.”