From that, and my have seen a copy of his letter to me. "Letters to the Inhabitants of Northumberland," of which I • have printed a new edition, you will see reason to congratulate me on the change of administration in this country. I shall hardly accept of his invitation to be his guest, but his known good opinion and good-will is of value. 'We have just heard of the expulsion of the French out of Egypt, but fear it will not lead to peace, but rather to a prolongation of this disastrous war. We do not, however, give entire credit to the account, which at present is only general. I have at this moment heard of a box of books sent by some mistake to Carlisle, and which had been there two years. It contains, they say, several of my own publications.† TO REV. T. LINDSEY.‡ DEAR FRIEND, Northumberland, July 22, 1801. I HAVE just received yours of March 30. I shall soon write to the Duke, to acknowledge his continued favour. Assisted as I am, I should be inexcusable if I did not do every thing in my power to promote the cause of truth, and also of science. I thank God, I am in no want of any means that are necessary to the objects of my pursuit. When I consider my library and apparatus, so ample as they are, and think that at the riots in Birmingham I was stripped of almost every thing, I am filled with astonishment and gratitude. Mr. Galton says, my friends in England wish me to send my philosophical publications to Nicholson's Journal, or the Philosophical Magazine; but I do not like to risk a MS. to that distance, as I seldom take more than one copy of any thing, and they may be copied into those works from the Medical Repository, which is a truly valuable publication. I lately liberty, and even life itself, are but dreary things; and let us reflect that, having banished from our land that religious intolerance, under which mankind so long bled and suffered, we have yet gained little, if we countenance a political intolerance, as despotic as wicked, and capable of as bitter and bloody persecution." N. A. Reg. XXII. (201), (202). * It occurred in September. See ibid. pp. 262-265, (84)—(86). Essex Street. ↑ Orig. MS. sent two articles for it. To-day I send another; and I shall soon draw out a fourth. One of these relates to some phenomena in dreams; and another, some confirmation of Mr. Noah Webster's Observations on Pestilential Diseases. This is a very curious and important work, which I wish you would read. He is what is here called a Federalist, and wrote an answer to my Letters to the Inhabitants of Northumberland; but I made no reply to him. I have had an example how much more pungent is our grief for small things than for greater. My little grand-daughter, a lively girl, that I am very fond of, got the seal you gave me as a keepsake, and carried it away. It was missing about a week, and my concern was really greater than I can describe; but at length our servant-man found it in the garden, when I had despaired of ever seeing it again. I shall take more care of it for the future. My joy on its recovery was in proportion to my grief. I thank you for your advice about going to France. I shall be governed by it. But really I have now very little expectation of ever seeing any part of Europe. May our meeting be in more favourable circumstances. DEAR FRIEND, TO THE SAME. Northumberland, July 30, 1801. By our last post I have received yours of the 22d of May. I am not surprised to hear of the death of Dr. Heberden.† His was a good and a happy old age. He had done enough for me, and I shall always think of him with respect and gratitude. I am thankful that my supplies have always been, and now are, equal to my wants. At least, I will make the latter correspond to the former; and indeed, at my time of life, my wants are much contracted, as I shall hardly engage in any thing materially new. The annual expense of my laboratory will hardly exceed 50%., and I think I may have done more in proportion to my expenses than any other man. What I have done here, and with little expense,* (now that I am in possession of an excellent apparatus,) will in time be thought very considerable; but on account of the almost universal reception of the new theory, what I do is not, at present, attended to; but Mr. Watt and Mr. Keir, as good chemists as any in Europe, approve of my tract on Phlogiston, and truth will in time prevail over any error. I can begin to print as soon as I can raise money enough to buy the paper. I have had great satisfaction in the composition of both these works, especially the Notes on the Scriptures. How is it that some can read with contempt what we read with admiration and the greatest reverence? I do not, however, feel the least disposition to abandon the study of nature. Each gives an additional relish to the other.† DEAR FRIEND, TO THE SAME. Northumberland, Oct. 2, 1801. HAVING sent to Mr. Nicholson a paper of experiments on the pile of Volta, I beg you would send him the above P. S. to it, and ask whether he have received the paper itself. I, this day, send him another article, in reply to what Mr. Cruikshank had advanced in the Journal on the subject of the new theory. Having had great success in my experiments in this country, as well as in England, I shall never desert philosophy; but I have much more satisfaction in theological studies, and I find they greatly aid one another. I have lately given more attention than I had done before, to natural history, and am exceedingly interested in it. Several conclusions of a higher nature are strongly suggested by this study. In a plan abounding with such marks of Infinite Wisdom, nothing surely can ultimately go wrong, and observations with a microscope convince us that the smallest things are attended to, as much as the greatest; the smallest events, therefore, as well as the greater and more striking. This consideration tends to reconcile us to small troubles and disappointments, as well as to * See I. 76, note ↑. + Orig. MS. those of greater magnitude. All are equally from the same hand. The view of the creation, and the connexion of its parts, must convince any attentive person of the folly of Arianism. No Being but He that planned and executed the whole, could create or superintend any part of the system. It must appear impossible that a Being of such immense wisdom and power can bear the least ill-will to any of his creatures, whose conduct, be it what it may, was a necessary part of his benevolent plan. It follows, with a force that gives me in my present situation a satisfaction I cannot describe, that the most refractory tempers must be rectified, some time or other, and in the mean time they are not without their use here, and the worst dispositions must be reclaimed. You will know to what I refer.* You wish me to visit Mr. Jefferson, and I have no objection, but the length of the journey, and the difficulties in the conveyance, of which I cannot give you an idea. However, if Mr. Jefferson's views succeed, I am rather inclined to go, especially as I shall preach to some advantage; but I fear that the bigotry of some, and the federalism of others, will defeat the scheme, and my own wishes are nearly balanced. I shall be much * See supra, pp. 407, 451. The work mentioned by Dr. Priestley, supra, p. 418, is "An Essay on Universal Redemption, tending to prove that the general Sense of Scripture favours the Opinion of the final Salvation of all Mankind. By the Rev. John Browne, M.A., late of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, 1798." An anonymous contemporary, who deduces the same benevolent conclusion from very different premises, says on another subject, and, respecting Dr. Priestley, in a style of unwarrantable censure, "Had Bishop Bull, Mr. Leslie, Dr. Waterland, Dr. Allix. Mr. Jones, Bishop Horsley, Mr. Badcock, Mr. Hawes, Dr. Geddes, and others, granted the doctrine of the pre-existence of souls, Dr. Priestley would not, after beating them, have treated the subject in debate with so much supercilious contempt, maintaining that Jesus Christ had never any spiritual existence, being a non-entity, before the existence of Mary his mother." See "The Pre-existence of Souls and Universal Restitution considered as Scripture Doctrines. Extracted from the Minutes and Correspondence of Burnham Society, 1798," p. 53, note. Of this society the eccentric Mr. John Henderson (see I. 235) was a distinguished member. more comfortable at home, as it will be in the winter, and can employ myself to more advantage. I have the Cambridge papers to June 27. The account of the debates in Parliament interests me much, and we have seldom any thing of them in the American papers. In your parcel I have received Mr. Morgan's pamphlet.* Give my compliments and thanks to him. I shall write again soon. P.S. I hope you see the Medical Repository. It will generally contain some article of mine, and on many accounts it is worth having. We have had an uncommonly sickly season in all these parts, though very few have died. You will see that I foretold it. I have had a slight ague, and not one in the family has entirely escaped. I thank God continually for your health and spirits, and hope that our lamps will go out nearly together. I am not what I was before my fever in Philadelphia. I have lost flesh and strength, but in other respects I feel very well; but bodily labour, either in the garden, in which I took much pleasure,† or in the laboratory, is now irksome to me, and I read more than I did.‡ DEAR FRIEND, TO THE SAME. Northumberland, Oct. 24, 1801. I HAVE received uncommon satisfaction from Mr. Kirwan's Geological Essays.§ It is a work worthy of a Christian philosopher, and with candid and judicious readers will weigh much in the scale of the evidences of revelation. I shall make much use of it in my notes on the first chapter of Genesis, though there are still some difficulties that are not completely removed. Chemistry was never employed to so good a purpose before. But the more we see into any part of the constitution of nature, the more do all the difficulties attending the system of * "A Comparative View of the Public Finances, from the Beginning to the Close of the late Administration." See N. A. Reg. XXII, [302]. Orig. MS. + See supra, p. 311, note. § See N. A. Reg. XXI. [271.] See, on Gen. i, 25, vii. 11, W. XI. 45, 55. |