"Ye vigilant and most faithful servants of the Most High; ye who worship the Creator morning, noon, and eve, in simplicity of heart! I haste to join the universal anthem. My heart and voice unite with yours in sincere homage to the great Creator, the universal Sovereign."

In 1782, he was elected Professor of Botany in the University of Pennsylvania, but, from ill health, declined the appointment. Besides his discoveries in botany, he prepared the most complete table of American ornithology before the appearance of the book of Wilson, whom he assisted in the commencement of that work. Such was his continued love to botany, that he wrote a description of a plant a few minutes before his death, which occurred suddenly by the rupture of a bloodvessel in the lungs, July 22d, 1823, in the eighty-fifth year of his age. He published "Travels through North and South Carolina, Georgia, East and West Florida, and the Cherokee Country, with Observations on the Manners of the Indians," with plates, 8vo., Philadelphia, 1781; the same, London, 1792; and translated into French by Benoist, entitled "Voyage," &c., 2 vols., Paris, 1801; "An Account of J. Bartram;" "Anecdotes of a Crow;""Description of Certhia ;" "On the Site of Bristol," &c.

PAUL BECK, JR.

PAUL BECK, JR., an eminent merchant and philanthropic citizen, was born at Philadelphia, being descended from a family of respectability and wealth, settled at the ancient and picturesque city of Nuremburg, the capital of the circle of Franconia, and a free city of the old German empire.

His father, Paulus Julianus Michäelis Beck, was married at Philadelphia, April 5th, 1757, having come to Pennsylvania in August, 1752. He had emigrated from Germany after an apprenticeship at Nuremburg to a cloth merchant, with whom he was placed when very young at the death of his parents, who not long previously, had been suddenly reduced from a state of affluence.

The subject of the present notice, the third child, and only son

of his parents who survived extreme infancy, about the age of fourteen years, in accordance with the custom then prevailing in mercantile business, was placed as an apprentice with Mr. William Sheaff, a prominent and successful wine merchant, respected for his integrity, but rigid in his discipline. From his lessons, and under his care, Mr. Beck rapidly acquired great skill in accounts, an excellent penmanship, which he never lost, and especially those prompt and accurate habits of commercial dealing which were destined to lead him rapidly to fortune, as they secured for him through life the highest position as an honorable merchant.

Before the term of his apprenticeship expired, the war with England broke out, and the Continental Congress passed a resolution, which was communicated to all the colonies, recommending that all able-bodied and effective men, between sixteen and fifty years of age, should form themselves into regular companies of militia. As soon as he attained the former age, Mr. Beck was enrolled in one of the companies of the first battalion of infantry, organized in Philadelphia, and commanded by Captain John Linton. Although Mr. Beck did not aspire to military distinction, yet it will be seen that, throughout the war, he was on the side of patriotism and duty. A part of his time was spent in Philadelphia, Pottsgrove, Reading, Lancaster, and other places. It was during this period that he formed friendships, which continued through his subsequent life, with many estimable citizens of Philadelphia, who embarked with zeal similar to his own in the Revolutionary cause. He preserved and used, until his death, a gold snuff-box presented to him by Major William Jackson, for some time the confidential secretary of General Washington. He is mentioned as the associate of the Clymers, General Mifflin, Major David Lenox, and others equally well known; and it fell to his lot, from these associations, to be among the citizens, though himself only nineteen years of age at the time, who assembled to protect the mansion of Mr. Wilson, afterwards one of the framers and signers of the Constitution of the United States, when it was attacked by a mob.* He treasured up and was fond of relating many incidents connected with the Revolutionary era, and that which immediately succeeded it, when the

* An interesting account of this event appears in volume sixth of "Lives of the Signers of the Declaration of Independence,” edition 1824.