Mr. Beveridge, who was appointed by the trustees of the college and academy of Philadelphia, in June, 1758, professor of languages in that institution, was one of the ablest masters of the Latin tongue; and wrote many poetical pieces in that language, in a style of superior purity and elegance. This excellent Latin scholar originally taught a grammar-school in Edinburgh, under the patronage of the celebrated Mr. Ruddiman. While in that station, he taught the Latin to Mr. Thomas Blacklock, the well-known blind poet; and it was during this time, that Blacklock wrote his fine paraphrase of Psalm CIV. which his friend Beveridge afterwards rendered into Latin verse. A collection of Mr. Beveridge’s poetical pieces, under the title of _Epistolæ Familiares et alia quædam miscellanea_, was published at Philadelphia, in the year 1765. Footnote 265: A Law Professorship was instituted in the College of Philadelphia, in the year 1790, and the Hon. James Wilson, LL.D. (late one of the associate judges of the supreme court of the United States,) was appointed the first professor: the first course of lectures, under this appointment, was delivered in the winter of 1790-1. In April, 1792, when the College and University became united into one seminary, under the latter title, a Professorship of Law was erected in the new seminary; when Judge Wilson was again appointed to fill that chair: but no Law-lectures were afterwards delivered. The lectures composed by the able and very learned Judge, for this department of the institution, are given entire in his works, published in three volumes octavo, in the year 1804, by his son Bird Wilson, Esq. president of the seventh judicial district of Pennsylvania. It is much to be regretted, that this important chair in the University has remained unoccupied, since the death of its late eminent incumbent: For, as he has justly observed, in his _Introductory Lecture_, “The science of Law should, in some measure and in some degree, be the study of every free citizen, and of every free man. Every free citizen and every free man has duties to perform, and rights to claim. Unless, in some measure, and in some degree, he knows those duties and those rights, he can never act a just and an independent part.” Footnote 266: In an Account of Dr. Smith, prefixed to his posthumous works, the respectable Editor observes—that “Dr. Smith was actuated by a “zeal bordering on enthusiasm” (as he himself expressed it), in his devotion to the dissemination of literature and science.”