I read the whole of the Greek Testament, and the Hebrew bible as far as the first Book of Samuel: also Ovid's Metamorphoses, Buchanan's poems, Erasmus' Dialogues, also Peter Pindar's poems, &c.... and

to amuse myself I tried the heat of the water at different depths, and made other observations, which suggest various experiments, which I shall prosecute whenever I get my apparatus at liberty.

SUFFER a Society which has been caluminated as devoid of all sense of religion, law or morality, to sympathize with one whom calumny of a similar kind is about to drive from his native land, a land which he has adorned and enlightened in almost every branch of liberal literature, and of useful philosophy. The emigration of Dr. Priestley will form a striking historical fact, by which alone, future ages will learn to estimate truly the temper of the present time. Your departure will not only give evidence of the injury which philosophy and literature have received in your person, but will prove the accumulation of petty disquietudes, which has robbed your life of its zest and enjoyment, for, at your age no one would willingly embark on such a voyage, and sure we are, it was your wish and prayer to be buried in your native country, which contains the dust of your old friends Saville, Price, Jebb, and Fothergill. But be cheerful, dear Sir, you are going to a happier world—the world of Washington and Franklin.

In idea, we accompany you. We stand near you while you are setting sail. We watch

your eyes that linger on the white cliffs and we hear the patriarchal blessing which your soul pours out on the land of your nativity, the aspiration that ascends to God for its peace, its freedom and its prosperity. Again, do we participate in your feelings on first beholding Nature in her noblest scenes and grandest features, on finding man busied in rendering himself worthy of Nature, but more than all, on contemplating with philosophic prescience the coming period when those vast inland seas shall be shadowed with sails, when the St. Lawrence and Mississippi, shall stretch forth their arms to embrace the continent in a great circle of interior navigation: when the Pacific Ocean shall pour into the Atlantic; when man will become more precious than fine gold, and when his ambition will be to subdue the elements, not to subjugate his fellow-creatures, to make fire, water, earth and air obey his bidding, but to leave the poor ethereal mind as the sole thing in Nature free and incoercible.

Happy indeed would it be were men in power to recollect this quality of the human mind. Suffer us to give them an example from a science of which you are a mighty

master, that attempts to fix the element of mind only increase its activity, and that to calculate what may be from what has been is a very dangerous deceit.—Were all the saltpetre in India monopolized, this would only make chemical researches more ardent and successful. The chalky earths would be searched for it, and nitre beds would be made in every cellar and every stable. Did not that prove sufficient the genius of chemistry would find in a new salt a substitute for nitre or a power superior to it.[3] It requires greater genius than Mr. Pitt seems to possess, to know the wonderful resources of the mind, when patriotism animates philosophy, and all the arts and sciences are put under a state of requisition, when the attention of a whole scientific people is bent to multiplying the means and instruments of destruction and when philosophy rises in a mass to drive on the wedge of war. A black powder has changed the military art, and in a great degree the manners of mankind. Why may not the same science which produced it, produce another powder which, inflamed under a certain compression, might impell the air, so as to shake down the strongest towers and scatter destruction.

But you are going to a country where science is turned to better uses. Your change of place will give room for the matchless activity of your genius; and you will take a sublime pleasure in bestowing on Britain the benefit of your future discoveries. As matter changes its form but not a particle is ever lost, so the principles of virtuous minds are equally imperishable; and your change of situation may even render truth more operative, knowledge more productive, and in the event, liberty itself more universal. Wafted by the winds or tossed by the waves, the seed that is here thrown out as dead, there shoots up and flourishes. It is probable that emigration to America from the first settlement downward, has not only served the cause of general liberty, but will eventually and circuitously serve it even in Britain. What mighty events have arisen from that germ which might once have been supposed to be lost forever in the woods of America, but thrown upon the bosom of Nature, the

breath of God revived it, and the world hath gathered its fruits. Even Ireland has contributed her share to the liberties of America; and while purblind statesmen were happy to get rid of the stubborn Presbyterians of the North, they little thought that they were serving a good cause in another quarter.—Yes! the Volunteers of Ireland still live—they live across the Atlantic. Let this idea animate us in our sufferings, and may the pure principles and genuine lustre of the British Constitution reflected from their Coast, penetrate into ourselves and our dungeons.

Farewell—great and good man! Great by your mental powers, by your multiplied literary labours, but still greater by those household virtues which form the only solid security for public conduct by those mild and gentle qualities, which far from being averse to, are most frequently attended with severe and inflexible patriotism, rising like an oak above a modest mansion.—Farewell—but before you go, we beseech a portion of your parting prayer to the author of Good for Archibald Hamilton Rowan, the pupil of Jebb, our Brother, now suffering imprisonment, and for all those

who have suffered, and are about to suffer in the same cause—the cause of impartial and adequate representation—the cause of the Constitution. Pray to the best of Beings for Muir, Palmer, Skirving, Margarott and Gerald, who are now, or will shortly be crossing, like you, the bleak Ocean, to a barbarous land!—Pray that they may be