od wishes are all an old man has to offer to his country or friends.
Mine attend yourself, with sincere assurances of esteem and respect,
which, however, I should be better pleased to tender you in person,
should your rambles ever lead you into the vicinage of Monticello.

Th: Jefferson.

LETTER XCIV.--TO DOCTOR BENJAMIN RUSH, January 16, 1811

TO DOCTOR BENJAMIN RUSH.

Monticello, January 16, 1811.

Dear Sir,

I had been considering for some days, whether it was not time by a
letter, to bring myself to your recollection, when I received
your welcome favor of the 2nd instant. I had before heard of the
heart-rending calamity you mention, and had sincerely sympathized with
your afflictions. But I had not made it the subject of a letter, because
I knew that condolences were but renewals of grief. Yet I thought, and
still think, this is one of the cases wherein we should 'not sorrow,
even as others who have no hope.'

*****

You ask if I have read Hartley? I have not. 'My present course of life
admits less reading than I wish. From breakfast, or noon at latest,
to dinner, I am mostly on horseback, attending to my farms or other
concerns, which I find healthful to my body, mind, and affairs; and the
few hours I can pass in my cabinet, are devoured by correspondences;
not those with my intimate friends, with whom I delight to interchange
sentiments, but with others, who, writing to me on concerns of their
own in which I have had an agency, or from motives of mere respect and
approbation, are entitled to be answered with respect and a return of
good will. My hope is that this obstacle to the delights of retirement
will wear away with the oblivion which follows that, and that I may at
length be indulged in those studious pursuits, from which nothing but
revolutionary duties would ever have called me.

I shall receive your proposed publication, and read it with the pleasure
which every thing gives me from your pen. Although much of a sceptic in
the practice of medicine, I read with pleasure its ingenious theories.

I receive with sensibility your observations on the discontinuance of
friendly correspondence between Mr. Adams and myself, and the concern
you take in its restoration. This discontinuance has not proceeded from
me, nor from the want of sincere desire, and of effort on my part, to
renew our intercourse. You know the perfect coincidence of principle and
of action, in the early part of the Revolution