winter, and I cannot encourage you to undertake the journey while the snow is on the ground: for here it often fails. The last winter we had three falls of snow, each completely melted before the next came. I once began a journey to Philadelphia on a sleigh, but the snow failed before we had got half way, which put us to great inconvenience.

Though I wish to know what it is that you have to propose, I am confident it is something great and generous, but such as I fear the times will not admit of. I will tell you, however, what I now intend, and I suspect it may bear some relation to your proposal. As soon as there is a free and safe communication with France, I really intend to make the voyage, in part to look after my property there; but, also, to see whether there be a prospect of doing any thing in favour of rational Christianity.

But I am far from being sanguine with respect to it, and imagine that all I can do there (or, indeed, elsewhere) will be by my writings, which are there already, though my being present might serve to excite a little more attention to them. As to preaching, I am nearly too old for it, and my teeth failing me, I could not appear to any advantage in the pulpit, even if my strength did not fail, as I perceive it to do. Besides, being so long out of the habit of public speaking, I should not soon recover the little power that I once had of that kind. I should, no doubt, wish for a larger field than I have here, but, small as it is, I am thankful for it, especially as it respects my class of young men, which, though not consisting of more than a dozen, is very promising. My congrega tion is sometimes about forty, and is not likely to increase.

I wish I could send you my treatise on Phlogiston;* for though the subject would not interest you, there is something in the preface, that you might like to see. It pleases my theological friends in general. I am also glad to hear, by Mr. Lindsey, that my Comparison, &c., gives them much satisfaction.†

*See supra, p. 426.

↑ Orig. MS.

TO REV. T. BELSHAM.*

Northumberland, Nov. 26, 1800.

DEAR SIR, I HAVE just received two of your very acceptable letters, and am happy to find you had then received three of mine. I do not know that I could have gone to any place more eligible on the whole. The climate I prefer greatly to that of England, especially for my experiments, many of which require sunshine, of which I have now plenty; whereas I have watched every gleam in England, and often to no purpose, for months together. What is called bad weather, such as rain or snow, seldom lasts more than two or three days. Clouds soon, and almost certainly, bring rain, and then the sky is clear again, both in winter and summer. The only circumstance I complain of is, the sudden changes from heat to cold, and vice versá, in all seasons. This I did not expect, having imagined that the climate in this, as in other respects, bore a nearer resemblance to that of Asia Minor and Palestine. But in return for inconstancy in the weather, we have a constant verdure, which they have not, and but little danger of hay or corn suffering in time of harvest.

In many respects we are far behind you in Europe; but we have the satisfaction of seeing every thing in a state of rapid improvement. Were I to tell you all the improvements that have been made in this remote part of the country since our arrival, I might write a little volume, and the amount would hardly appear credible. This place has many natural advantages, and must, in time, be a very considerable town. I have had some views of it taken, which I will, the first opportunity, send to Mr. Lindsey. Some of them, I believe, will be engraved to accompany an account of this part of the country, and an actual survey of our river as far as it is navigable.

That my Calvinistic friends should expect any change in my sentiments † is a little extraordinary; but it seems to shew that they do not think very ill of me. I do not, however, think it

• Hackney.

+ See supra, p. 299.

at all necessary to make any such formal declaration as you recommend. My Church History and Notes on the Scriptures,* with the last of my publications, or posthumous ones, will abundantly answer that purpose. Nothing but a great interval between the last of my publications and my death, could give any colour to the surmise. If I publish those works myself, it must be when I can superintend the press; but the delay of a year or two will be no disadvantage to them, though it is not my custom to delay nine years, as you have done with respect to your lectures. I rejoice, however, that you have at length resolved to send them to the press. I was afraid I should not have lived to see them.

P. S. How is my treatise on Phlogiston received by my philosophical friends ?†

* In a letter, "Dec. 16, 1831," which I shall have another occasion to notice, Mr. Priestley has thus obligingly set me right, as to circumstances respecting both these works, which I appear to have misapprehended:

"I take this opportunity of correcting an error into which you have fallen, in your prefaces to the 10th and 13th volumes, in supposing that the latter volumes of the Church History were published after my father's death, and that the Notes on the Scriptures were not in the state in which they would have been published had he been alive.

"The fact is, that the whole of the Church History was printed by my father in 1803, he superintending the press himself, when he was as capable of doing so as at any period of his life. Of the Notes on the Scriptures, he printed the whole of the first volume, and as far, I think, as to the end of the Prophet Isaiah in the second volume, and two or three sheets in the third. The doctrines of Heathen Philosophy were ready for the press, and were printed by myself after his death.

"But, that he would not have made any alterations in either of the latter works I am satisfied from the circumstance, that he never began to print any work till it was completely ready for the press; never making any material alterations; and I have heard him say, that he never made the printers wait for copy, or for the correction of any mistakes, but their own. My father, expecting that he should not live to print the works, left the whole in such order that there could not well be any mistake; nor is there any material one, that I am aware of, except that there was an omission of the Notes of one whole chapter of the Book of Revelation; but, whether the omission was my father's or the printer's, I cannot tell, as I was absent at the time that part was printed." Orig. MS.

I had conjectured, in 1810, that, "on Ch. vii., the author had written no notes, or else they were accidentally omitted in preparing the Northumberland edition." See W. XIV. 459, ad fin.

↑ Orig. MS.

TO REV. T. LINDSEY.*

DEAR FRIEND,

Northumberland, Dec. 16, 1800.

To my remarks on the history of Goliath, I wish to add an account of the size of one Middleton, commonly called the child of Hale, near Warrington.† He lived in the time of James I., and being sent for to court, his picture was taken as he went through Oxford. I went to see it, at Hale, and there was, in my time, a copy of it at the Red Lion inn, in Warrington. I dare say Dr. Aikin will remember it, and perhaps may, without farther inquiry, give me the information I want. Please to give my respects to him and request this favour of him.

Unitarianism has, I doubt not, taken firm root in this country; but its progress is slow, though, in time, the grain of mustard seed may become a respectable plant. Both my congregation and class of young men are something diminished, and the Unitarian Society at Philadelphia is broken up. Several of the members were carried off by the yellow fever. Others left the place, and few native Americans joined them;

Essex Street.

+ See, on 1 Sam. xvii. 4, W. XI. 376.

The following passages of a letter to Mr. Lindsey discover how Dr. Priestley had accelerated this progress, before his emigration; while the subsequent, and especially the recent, prevalence of Unitarianism, throughout the United States, sanctions the anticipations of the learned professor :

"I have the pleasure of inclosing you the thanks of the College for Dr. Priestley's theological works. We are much obliged to you for your kind intention of having sent the philosophical works; but we were before possessed of them; and the opinion they had excited in the minds of the students here, of the Doctor's superiority as a writer, led them to look into the theological works with avidity, the moment they were deposited in the library for their use.

"I am persuaded that, by means of them, and of your own valuable labours in the same cause, the seeds of Unitarianism will be sown in the minds of the youth in this seminary, and yield such fruit as will shew that they were not uselessly bestowed. In other parts of the continent, as well as here, they have excited a spirit of inquiry and attention to the subject, that cannot, I think, be unfavourable to the progress of truth, and must afford you the highest satisfaction. J. SMITH. Cambridge, N. E., July 11, 1789." Orig. MS. See supra, p. 306, note.

the whole congregation, in a manner, being emigrants from England.

I do not hear of any farther progress of infidelity in this country; but there is a great indifference to religion among the most intelligent Christians, and this is little better than infidelity. They neither converse nor read on the subject. Thus losing sight both of the thing itself and the evidence of it, the transition to absolute infidelity is very easy; and when once that step is taken, a dislike of the subject increases continually, so that there is little probability of their being reclaimed. The secret suspicion they may have of their having concluded too hastily, will not lead them to reconsider the arguments.*

DEAR FRIEND,

TO THE SAME.

Northumberland, Dec. 25, 1800.

I HAVE just received yours of 29th September, in which you mentioned the receipt of three of mine. I hope that, before this time, you will have received others, one of them containing a copy of another letter from Mr. Jefferson, approving of the plan I sent him of the constitution of their new college.† I have also sent you copies of three articles for Mr. Nicholson's Journal.

I wish you may see the Medical Repository, printed at New York. It contains many curious articles, especially in natural history, that will interest you, and all the admirers of the works of God. See also, if you can, the 4th volume of the Transactions of the Philosophical Society at Philadelphia, for an account, by Mr. Jefferson, of a large animal, of the lion kind, probably now existing on this continent, but about three times the size of the African lion.

The extent of the works of creation are very imperfectly known to us. Much has been discovered on this small globe on which we live; but much more remains to be explored. It is a noble field of speculation, so naturally leading to devotion,

* Orig. MS.

↑ See supra, pp. 436, 442.