George Ticknor, Life, letters and journals of George Ticknor
George Hillard, Ed.

[301] and to enclose it in this, under cover to your father, that you may get it in time. My letters are always letters of thanks, because you are always furnishing occasion for them. I am very glad you have been so kind as to make the alteration you mention in the Herodotus and Livy I had asked from the Messrs. Desbures. I have not yet heard from them, but daily expect to do so, and to learn the arrival of my books. I shall probably send them another catalogue early in spring; every supply from them furnishing additional materials for my happiness.

I had before heard of the military ingredients which Bonaparte had infused into all the schools of France, but have never so well understood them as from your letter. The penance he is now doing for all his atrocities must be soothing to every virtuous heart. It proves that we have a God in heaven, that he is just, and not careless of what passes in this world; and we cannot but wish, to this inhuman wretch, a long, long life, that time, as well as intensity, may fill up his sufferings to the measure of his enormities. But, indeed, what sufferings can atone for his crimes against the liberties and happiness of the human race; for the miseries he has already inflicted on his own generation, and on those yet to come, on whom he has riveted the chains of despotism!

I am now entirely absorbed in endeavors to effect the establishment of a general system of education in my native State, on the triple basis: 1. of elementary schools which shall give to the children of every citizen, gratis, competent instruction in reading, writing, common arithmetic, and general geography; 2. Collegiate institutions for ancient and modern languages, for higher instruction in arithmetic, geography, and history, placing, for these purposes, a college within a day's ride of every inhabitant of the State, and adding a provision for the full education, at the public expense, of select subjects from among the children of the poor, who shall have exhibited at the elementary schools the most prominent indications of aptness, of judgment, and correct disposition; 3. A university, in which all the branches of science deemed useful at this day, shall be taught in their highest degree. This would probably require ten or twelve professors, for most of whom we shall be obliged to apply to Europe, and most likely to Edinburgh, because of the greater advantage the students will receive from communications made in their native language. This last establishment will probably be within a mile of Charlottesville, and four from Monticello, if the system should be adopted at all by our Legislature, who meet within a week from this time. My