3l8 LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF THE [^790 



James Davidson, Robert Patterson, Robert Walsh, Charles Willing 

 Hare, Thomas Say, Robert Adrain, Samuel B. Wylic, the Rev. 

 Edward Rutledge, the Rev. Christian Cruse, Henry D. Rogers, 

 Henry Vcthake, the Rev. Roswell Park, Alexander Dallas Bache, 

 Henry Reed, and many others of hardly less if of any less abilities 

 at all. 



The Board of Trustees has ever comprised men of the first im- 

 portance in this great city. Yet till the day of the Provost Stille 

 himself the College has ever languished. It is only in ]iis day, by 

 the curing efforts of that great physician Time, and by Dr. Stille's 

 own ever-active, well-directed, and most efficient labors — the devo- 

 tion, the consecration I might even say — for he has made it a high 

 and religious work — the consecration of all his best years to it — 

 that the College is now, in i88o, beginning to be worthy of what 

 it was when Dr. William Smith left it. William Smith was the 

 Fiindator, Charles J. Stille is the Rcstilutor. Each as much as the 

 other has been a Conditor. The institution with such a Provost 

 and with a Faculty like that now there, thank God, exalts its 

 towery head.* 



Notwithstanding that Philadelphia was now the Capital of the 

 nation and that its Congress and pulpits were filled with eloquent 

 men from every State in the new Union, Dr. Smith was still the 

 favorite orator of the time, especially in the eloquence of the pul- 

 pit. The 4th of July, 1790 — the second "Fourth" since the opera- 

 tion of the Constitution — fell on Sunday. Accordingly, at a 

 meeting of the standing committee of the Pennsylvania Society 

 of the Cincinnati, held at the house of General Walter Stewart, 

 June 28th, 1790, it was 



Resolved, That as the Fourth of July would be on Sunday next, a ser- 

 mon be delivered in celebration of American Independence in lieu 

 of an oration ; and that the Rev. Dr. William Smith, rrovost of the 

 College of Philadelphia, be requested to prepare and deliver one before 

 the Society on said day. 



*It is with sincere regret and with great anxiety for the future welfare of the Col- 

 lege that just after writing these lines, I learn that there is a jjrobability that Dr. Stille 

 — worn down, as it is stated, by his unintermitted and great labors, and wishing to re- 

 fresh himself with European travel — desires to be relieved from his Provostship. The 

 loss of such a man will not, at this moment, be easily supplied. 



