e there still.

The library was miscellaneous, many of the books being
presentation-copies, and most of them neatly bound. Its predominant
character, as nearly as I can recollect, was historical; the history in
which he had borne so important a part naturally coming in for a full
share. Though not a scholar from choice, General Lafayette loved books,
and was well read. His Latin had stood him in stead at Olmuetz for his
brief communication with his surgeon; and I have a distinct impression,
though I cannot vouch for the correctness of it, that he never dropped
it altogether. His associations were too much among men of thought as
well as men of action, and the responsibilities that weighed upon him
were too grave, to permit so conscientious a man to neglect the aid of
books. Of the historians of our Revolution, he preferred Ramsay, who
had, as he said, put everything into his two volumes, and abridged as
well as Eutropius. It was, perhaps, the presence of something of the
same quality that led him to give the preference, among the numerous
histories of the French Revolution, to Mignet, though, in putting
him into my hands, he cautioned me against that dangerous spirit
of fatalism, which, making man the unconscious instrument of an
irresistible necessity, leaves him no real responsibility for evil or
for good.

It was in this room that he passed the greater part of the time that was
not given to his farm or his guests. I never entered it without finding
him at his desk, with his pen or a book in hand. His correspondence was
so extensive that he was always obliged to keep a secretary, though a
large portion of his letters were written with his own hand. He wrote
rapidly in fact, though not rapidly to the eye; and you were surprised,
in seeing his hand move over the paper, to find how soon it reached the
bottom of the sheet, and how closely it filled it up. His handwriting
was clear and distinct, neither decidedly French nor decidedly
English,--like all his habits and opinions, formed early and never
changed. I have letters of his to my grandfather, written during the
Revolution, and letters of his to myself, written fifty years after it,
in which it is almost impossible to trace the difference between the old
man and the young one. English he seemed to write as readily as French,
although a strong Gallicism would every now and then slip from his pen,
as it slipped from his tongue. "I had to learn in a hurry," said he,
gi