JOSEPH PRIESTLEY. 95 



But these halcyon days were ended by a bitter storm. The French 

 Revolution broke out. An electric shock ran through the nations ; 

 whatever there was of corrupt and retrograde, and, at the same time, 

 a great deal of what there was of best and noblest, in European so- 

 ciety, shuddered at the outburst of long-pent-up social fires. Men's 

 feelings were excited in a way that we in this generation can hardly 

 comprehend. Party wrath and virulence were expressed in a manner 

 unparalleled, and it is to be hoped impossible, in our times ; and 

 Priestley and his friends were held up to public scorn, even in Parlia- 

 ment, as fomentei's of sedition. A " Ohurch-and-King " cry was raised 

 against the Liberal Dissenters ; and in Birmingham it was intensified 

 and specially directed toward Priestley by a local controversy, in 

 which he had engaged with his usual vigor. In 1791 the celebration 

 of the second anniversary of the taking of the Bastile by a public 

 dinner, with which Priestley had nothing whatever to do, gave the 

 signal to the loyal and pious mob, who, unchecked, and indeed to 

 some extent encouraged, by those who were responsible for order, had 

 the town at their mercy for three days. The chapels and houses of 

 the leading Dissenters were wrecked, and Priestley and his family 

 had to fly for their lives, leaving library, apparatus, papers, and all 

 their possessions, a prey to the flames. 



Priestley never returned to Birmingham. He bore the outrages 

 and losses inflicted upon him with extreme patience and sweetness, 1 

 and betook himself to London. But even his scientific colleagues 

 gave him a cold shoulder; and, though he was elected minister of a 

 congregation at Hackney, he felt his position to be insecure, and 

 finally determined on emigrating to the United States. He landed 

 in America in 1794; lived quietly with his sons at Northumberland, 

 in Pennsylvania, where his posterity still flourish ; and, clear-headed 

 and busy to the last, died February 6, 1804. 



Such were the conditions under which Joseph Priestley did the 

 work which lay before him, and then, as the Norse Sagas say, went 

 out of the story. The work itself was of the most varied kind. No 

 human interest was without its attraction for Priestley, and few men 

 have ever had so many irons in the fire at once ; but, though he may 

 have burned his fingers a little, very few who have tried that opera- 

 tion have burned their fingers so little. He made admirable discov- 

 eries in science ; his philosophical treatises are still well worth read- 

 ing ; his political works are full of insight and replete with the spirit 

 of freedom ; and, while all these sparks flew off from his anvil, the 

 controversial hammer rained a hail of blows on orthodox priest and 



1 Even Mrs. Priestley, who might be forgiven for regarding the destroyers of her 

 household gods with some asperity, contents herself, in writing to Mrs. Barbauld, with 

 the sarcasm that the Birmingham people " will scarcely find so many respectable char- 

 acters a second time to make a bonfire of." 



