I am highly gratified by your kind remembrance of me & much flattered by the token of it which I received yesterday. You do me no more than justice when you suppose that I think well of your Dutch Ancestors. I have never seen a country that impressed me so deeply with a sense of veneration for those who may be said to have created it, as Holland, in which word I include her confederate promises. I dont see how it is possible for you to refrain from visiting it. There is a single picture in the museum at Amsterdam, which is worth a voyage across the Atlantic. The subject at the grand feast given by the Dutch officers in the pacification of Europe by the treaty of Munster. Commend me to our excellent friend Bleecker, & tell him that I read every one of the <illegible>, even some that I could not translate tho’ I made a shift to make out one or two of those in Dutch.

You allow more might to my advice than I fear my friends would give it. I therefore substitute that of my sensable friend Mr. Macon, who in a letter lately recd. writes, “if Gen. Jackson acts on the principle of his letter to Monroe he will probably fail. A Cabinet without confidence, is like a <train> that will not pull together. It ought to be <an> unit. If there be any thing afloat now worth communicating, I am not apprized of it. No doubt you have the most full & correct information. My health confines me for the most part to my chamber I scarcely see anyone except Benton, who is good enough to look in upon me now and then.

Accept my kindest acknowledgements for the interest you are pleased to express in my health and welfare, and believe me, with the most lively sentiments of regard and esteem