granddaughter Ellen Wayles Coolidge in her travel diary from a trip to England, "He lived in exciting times when the past was in battle array against the present and the future, and it was to be decided whether old habits and abuses or new claims and aspirations were to regulate the destinies of nations. He threw himself on the generous and hopeful side. He was a friend of many. His confidence in the powers & virtues of man was unlimited.He believed that people every where wanted nothing but knowledge to make them capable of self government, and knowledge might and should be placed within their reach. Whether in judging other men too much after his own proportions he was right or wrong remains to be proved. If not deceived, by his own ardent and generous nature, in his estimate of his kind, if men are what he believed them to be, then his name will descend to posterity one of the brightest records of history. If, on the contrary, the melancholy fact should be too clearly proved that human nature is too wicked or too weak to be trusted, that liberty must degenerate into anarchy, and that man can only be protected by force from the consequences of his folly, even then the just and impartial will give Mr. Jefferson credit for his generous intentions and only mourn that his great powers should have been wasted on a hopeless cause, and his name abused by those who perverted his principles. His domestic character was the most perfect I have ever known. After many years, and much experience of the qualities necessary to make the happiness of family life. I am but the more confirmed in my opinion that these were possessed by my grandfather in a greater degree than I have found in any other individual. If devoted attachment on the part of all of his household,---children, grandchildren, servants, dependents of every sort, and the warm affection and unqualified admiration of friends, neighbors be any test of domestic and social excellence, then was Mr. Jefferson equalled by few, surpassed by none in all the virtues that command reverence and love."