To so honourable a testimony, in favour of the merits of the Pennsylvania observers of this Transit, as that of Mr. Maskelyne, the acknowledgments of many other eminent foreign astronomers might be superadded: And the Rev. Dr. Smith, addressing himself to the American Philosophical Society, observes, “that societies of the first reputation in Europe are not ashamed to place our labours on a footing with their own; freely acknowledging, that we have been chiefly instrumental in ascertaining that great desideratum in astronomy, the sun’s parallax; and, consequently, the dimensions of the solar system.” See his Oration, delivered before the society, Jan. 22, 1773. Footnote 124: The compliment here paid by the Astronomer-Royal to the Hon. T. Penn, proprietary of the late province of Pennsylvania, for the zeal he manifested in _promoting_ the Pennsylvania Observations of the Transit of Venus, was well merited,—as the detailed accounts of that highly interesting phænomenon abundantly shew. Nor was that the only instance in which Mr. Penn discovered his attachment to the reputation and prosperity of that extensive American territory, which continues to bear the name of his family. He was, on various occasions, a liberal and disinterested benefactor to public institutions in Pennsylvania: as a proof of which, his aggregated donations to the College of Philadelphia, prior to the American war, amounting to about twelve thousand dollars—besides a grant of the manor of Perkessie in Bucks county, containing upwards of 3000 acres,—need alone be mentioned. But it is within the knowledge of many persons in the midst of whom these memoirs are penned, that even the Juliana Library Company, in Lancaster (an inland and secondary town of Pennsylvania) experienced repeated proofs of the munificence of Mr. Penn, and also of his late truly noble and excellent consort, after whom that institution was named. The writer himself, well knows, from the tenor of numerous letters, not only from Mr. but Lady Juliana Penn, (who honoured the Rev. Mr. Barton with their friendship and correspondence, for the space of twenty years,—a patronage which was continued to a member of his family, long after Mr. Penn’s death,) the generous and unremitted attention of both, to whatever seemed likely to promote the honour or the interest of Pennsylvania. Thomas Penn, Esq. died on the 21st of March, 1775, when he had just completed the seventy-fourth year of his age. He was the survivor of all the children of the illustrious founder of Pennsylvania; “whose virtues, as well as abilities, he inherited in an eminent degree,”—as was justly observed in an obituary notice published soon after his decease. Lady Juliana, his widow, survived him many years.