g-table becomes
daily and hourly more deadly and insurmountable. In place of this has
come on a canine appetite for reading. And I indulge it, because I see
in it a relief against the _taedium senectutis_; a lamp to lighten my
path through the dreary wilderness of time before me, whose bourne I see
not. Losing daily all interest in the things around us, something else
is necessary to fill the void. With me it is reading, which occupies the
mind without the labor of producing ideas from my own stock.

I enter into all your doubts as to the event of the revolution of South
America. They will succeed against Spain. But the dangerous enemy is
within their own breasts. Ignorance and superstition will chain their
minds and bodies under religious and military despotism. I do believe it
would be better for them to obtain freedom by degrees only; because that
would by degrees bring on light and information, and qualify them to
take charge of themselves understanding; with more certainty, if, in
the mean time, under so much control as may keep them at peace with
one another. Surely, it is our duty to wish them independence and
self-government, because they wish it themselves, and they have the
right, and we none, to choose for themselves: and I wish, moreover, that
our ideas may be erroneous, and theirs prove well-founded. But these are
speculations, my friend, which we may as well deliver over to those who
are to see their developement. We shall only be lookers on, from the
clouds above, as now we look down on the labors, the hurry, and bustle
of the ants and bees. Perhaps, in that super-mundane region, we may
be amused with seeing the fallacy of our own guesses, and even the
nothingness of those labors which have filled and agitated our own time
here.

_En attendant_, with sincere affections to Mrs. Adams and yourself, I
salute you both cordially.

Th: Jefferson.

LETTER CXLIV.--TO JOHN ADAMS, November 13, 1818

TO JOHN ADAMS.

Monticello, November 13, 1818.

The public papers, my dear friend, announce the fatal event of which
your letter of October the 20th had given me ominous foreboding.
Tried myself in the school of affliction, by the loss of every form of
connection which can rive the human heart, I know well, and feel what
you have lost, what you have suffered, are suffering, and have yet to
endure. The same trials have taught me that, for ills so immeasurable,
time and silence are the only medicine. I will