," she
wrote, in a well-known letter,

"your extraordinary fortitude with new wonder at every new
misfortune. Often, after reflecting on this subject, you
appear to me so superior, so elevated above all other men; I
contemplate you with such a strange mixture of humility,
admiration, reverence, love, and pride, that very little
superstition would be necessary to make me worship you as a
superior being; such enthusiasm does your character excite
in me. When I afterward revert to myself, how insignificant
do my best qualities appear! My vanity would be greater if I
had not been placed so near you; and yet my pride is our
relationship. I had rather not live than not be the daughter
of such a man."

Mr. Madison was President then. In other days her father had been on
terms of peculiar intimacy with Madison and his beautiful and
accomplished wife. Burr, in his later years, used to say that it was
he who had brought about the match which made Mrs. Madison an inmate
of the Presidential mansion. With the members of Madison's Cabinet,
too, he had been socially and politically familiar. When Theodosia
perceived that her father had no longer a hope of success in his
Mexican project, she became anxious for his return to America. But
against this was the probability that the Administration would again
arrest him and bring him to trial for the third time. Theodosia
ventured to write to her old friend, Albert Gallatin, Secretary of the
Treasury, asking him to interpose on her father's behalf. A letter
still more interesting than this has recently come to light. It was
addressed by Theodosia to Mrs. Madison. The coldest heart cannot read
this eloquent and pathetic production without emotion. She writes:--

"MADAM,--You may perhaps be surprised at receiving a letter
from one with whom you have had so little intercourse for
the last few years. But your surprise will cease when you
recollect that my father, once your friend, is now in exile;
and that the President only can restore him to me and his
country.

"Ever since the choice of the people was first declared in
favor of Mr. Madison, my heart, amid the universal joy, has
beat with the hope that I, too, should soon have reason to
rejoice. Convinced that Mr. Madison would neither feel nor
judge from the feelings or judgment of others, I had no
doubt of his haste