Madison sat in the library at his father’s house near Orange, Virginia, its three tall windows looking west across a long descending pasture toward a beautiful vista of the Blue Ridge. And he stayed in that room and read for months and months. It may be just an accident that Jefferson’s Monticello and Madison’s Montpelier, for all their similarities, such as Doric columns, bricks, and fine views, have a fundamental difference in orientation: Jefferson’s creation faces east, toward the flatter part of Virginia, while Madison’s inherited house looks westward, toward the mountains and, beyond
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