Soon after his settlement at Northumberland, many persons, with a view that his qualifications as an instructor of youth should not be wholly lost to the country, concurred in a plan for the establishment of a college at Northumberland. To this scheme several subscribed from this motive alone. Many of the principal landholders, partly from the above and partly from motives of interest, contributed largely both in money and land, and there was a fair prospect, from the liberal principles upon which it was founded, that it would have been of very great advantage to the country. My father was requested to draw up a plan of the course of study he would recommend, as well as the rules for the internal management of the institution, and he was appointed President. He however declined receiving any emolument, and proposed giving such lectures as he was best qualified for, _gratis_; in the same manner as he had done at Hackney, and he meant to have given to the institution the use of his library and apparatus, until the students could have been furnished with them by means of the funds of the college. In consequence of the unexpected failure of some of the principal contributors, the scheme fell through at that time, and little more was done during my father’s life time than to raise the shell of a convenient building. I shall in this place state, though I shall anticipate, in so doing, that in the year 1803 a vacancy occurred in the University of Pennsylvania, by the death of Dr. Euen, Principal of that institution. It was intimated to my father by many of the Trustees, that in case he would accept of the appointment, there was little doubt of his obtaining it; Mr. M’Kean, the present governor of the State of Pennsylvania, being among others particularly anxious that he should accept of it. In addition to the reasons that had induced him to decline the offer of the Professorship of Chemistry were to be added the weak state of his health, which would have made the idea of his having any serious engagement to fulfil, very irksome to him; he accordingly declined it. He had frequent intimations of other proposals of a similar nature that would have been made to him, had it not become generally known, that he could not accede to them from their being inconsistent with the plan of life he had laid down for himself.