not chance or luck that placed him there. Solid and trusty qualities and varied and honorable public experiences were his recommendations. Virginia had no other man so well fitted to follow Jefferson and Madison; and with him the succession passed from the "Mother of Presidents."

In his Presidency there was no disappointment. It went beyond public expectations. Partisan conflict was at its lowest ebb most of the time. Prosperity was unbounded; and never before, perhaps, had the Nation made greater and more certain strides in the conditions of permanency and union. However peaceful the

times, his Administration was eventful, valuable, and interesting.

Age and disease had overtaken him before he quit public employments; and although he had little disposition to depart from the course pursued by his predecessors in holding himself aloof from public affairs, ill-health would soon have cut short any other course. What of distinction men attached to the life he had lived, he enjoyed quietly and with little concern.

Few men have been noted for their great deeds. Most praiseworthy lives have been marked by their multitude of good deeds. Without being great in any thing, Mr. Monroe worked more than ordinarily well in most things. He never lost sight of his own moral accountability, and exacted less of men than he expected and desired them to exact of him.

CHAPTER XXXI.

THE WHITE HOUSE FROM 1817 TO 1825-THE PRESIDENT AND HIS FAMILY.

WH

HILE attending the Continental Congress, then in session in New York, Mr. Monroe was married in February, 1786, to Eliza Kortright, daughter of Lawrence Kortright, of New York City, a man of some standing, whose family was one of the most attractive in the Tory city during the Revolutionary War.

Kortright had four daughters and one son; and one of these daughters married Nicholas Gouverneur, a member of one of the old Colonial families; one of them became Mrs. Knox; and another married Hyleger, a person of some note about the Court of the King of Denmark. These Kortright (Kortwright) girls were said to be unusually accomplished for the times, although it does not exactly appear in what way, as the term accomplished, applied to women, was vastly more vague and really senseless then than it is at this day. But they were pretty, fashionable, society people, in an aristocratic, strong Tory community with English preferences, and a strong excess of English practices.

The following letter dated March 2, 1786, and written by Mr. Monroe to his uncle, Joseph Jones,

was furnished for this work by Mrs. Marian Gou

verneur :

"Agreeable to the information I gave you in my last the Thursday evening I was united to the young lady I mentioned, to avoid the idle ceremonies of the place, we withdrew into the country for a few days. We, several days since, returned to her father's house, since which, I, as usual, have attended Congress. While I remain in Congress we shall reside with him. If the state of business here will permit, I shall unquestionably attend the court in April. My plan is to bring Mrs. Monroe into Virginia the latter end of June next. In the meantime I shall seek to effect the best possible establishment either in Fredericksburg or Richmond. Colonel Grayson advises strongly Richmond, and is further of opinion that it will be ill-advised in me to attend the court as I shall lose, perhaps one hundred and fifty pounds by it. I hope you will have time to advise me upon this head. Enclose me also the act of assembly passed in 1784 referring it to Congress whether they shall pay the British debts, while they continue their present infractions of the treaty. We · have not this act, and wish it much.

"Believe me your affectionate friend and servant,

"JAMES MONROE."

Soon after this Mr. Monroe and his wife took up their residence at Fredericksburg, where he engaged in the practice of the law. When Monroe entered the Congress of the United States Mrs. Monroe accompanied him to the Capital, and from that time to the end of her life, she was his companion in his various public employments. She went with him to France and keenly Ishared with him the manner of his recall in 1797. When he again returned to Europe in 1803, she, with her two children, was with him. Here Mrs. Monroe acquired much of that polish which she displayed in the positions she filled by her husband's side at home, as well as the aristocratic and exclusive tendencies of

which she was charged. Mrs. Monroe was naturally

proud-spirited, and especially after her marriage, had little taste for what is commonly called society. She was able at the outset to see what most realize only when it is too late, that a life devoted to society is neither unselfish nor wise, that it is "vanity and vexation of spirit." She had duties to perform for which she could have no substitute. These duties

were the objects and pleasure of her life. The fiction, termed society, could not draw her from these. Society, then as now, meant gossip, panniers, brocades, comparisons, precedences, despotisms, unreasonable exactions under uninteresting circumstances, incongeniality, conflicts, ignorance, rudeness, scandal, insincerity, sorrow, compunction, vexation, time irreparably lost, and an extended train of many-sided evils and disappointments, with few or no palliating accompaniments. Society never does anything greater than repeat itself, and anything worse than this it could barely do. Society is a strife of great I's with little brains and less heart, and twisted and dubious morals. Society is idleness, tittle-tattle, late hours, over-eating, over-drinking, over-talking, over-playing, overlying, under-working, under-sleeping, under-thinking, and much other unmanly practice and dissipation. "Society" is mainly homicidal, and the most supremely selfish thing in the world.

Some stress is put upon this foolish and worthless thing here because Mrs. Monroe could not give herself to it, and because all who have said any thing about her, probably for want of anything better or worse to say, have said that she was not at all inclined to or fond of "society," as if "society" were the grand end of human life. With a matter-of-course kind of

air this comes to us, as if to indicate that this want was Mrs. Monroe's crime, that this was really the verdict upon her conduct. But life had evidently come to mean something calmer, and better to her than "society," however private feelings of pride may have disfigured it. And even her modified views of a better and safer social life her delicate organization stood in the way of her carrying out. There is some evidence to show that she made a reasonable use of the talent and strength she had. She omitted few of the real demands and duties of life; and the occasions in which she could benefit those around her were not passed unheeded. Towards the close of Mr. Monroe's Presidency she was unable to appear often in the not altogether reasonable place public sentiment had assigned the wife of the President in the exhibitions and ceremonies of the White House.

The following recollections concerning Mrs. Monroe were written to be used in this work, on the 30th of March, 1880, by Mrs. Nicholas P. Trist, granddaughter of Thomas Jefferson, then residing in Alexandria, Virginia, and at the instance of Mrs. Gouver

neur:

"My earliest recollection of Mrs. Monroe was a visit she made my mother at Edgehill after Mr. Monroe's return from France, whither my grandfather sent him as minister. She was accompanied by Maria Monroe, a child near my own age, and this visit was impressed on my memory by the then new fashion of pantalettes on little girls. Maria Monroe wore them, fresh from Paris. I of course have no distinct recollections of Mrs. Monroe's appearance then, but Colonel Monroe (as he was called before he was President) owned a place but three miles from Monticello, where they passed a part of their summers for many years. Naturally there was much intercourse between the two families, especially between my grandfather and Mr. Monroe.