Page:Life And Letters Of Thomas Jefferson -- Hirst (IA in.ernet.dli.2015.89541).pdf/550



is fashionable nowadays to affix tablets to houses where famous men are known, or supposed, to have lived, and even to convert them into shrines where their memories may be cherished and relics of their deeds preserved. The instinct is natural and laudable. We are grateful for the patriotism which has saved the house of Shakespeare, of Sir Walter Scott, of George Washington. If a hero deserves to be worshipped, his home deserves to be maintained. And there are some houses so interwoven with a noble life, so beautiful in themselves, so laden with history, that it were a national crime to let them perish in decay. America has just become aware that Monticello is one of her national treasures. Mount Vernon does not tell us more of Washington than Monticello of Jefferson.