SKETCH OF THE LIFE OF DR. PRIESTLEY. 481 



of a century ago, before the medical students of the New York Uni- 

 versity ; of course with no reference whatever to the present occasion. 

 It was privately printed by the class for their own use, and has never 

 before been given to the public. Its perusal cannot fail to sharpen 

 the interest of readers to know more of the personality of the remark- 

 able man who made the greatest of all chemical discoveries, and to 

 whose eventful career there attaches so romantic an interest. The 

 materials of the following sketch are compiled from the summary of 

 Priestley's work given by Dr. Thomas Thomson, in his history of 

 chemistry in 1829, and from the "Autobiography and Life of Priest- 

 ley," j)ublished by his son in 1807. 



Joseph Pkiestley was born in 1733, near Leeds, in Yorkshire, Eng- 

 land. His father was a poor mechanic, a cloth-dresser, and his mother 

 the daughter of a farmer. He was the eldest child, and, having lost 

 his mother when six years of age, he went to live with his aunt, a 

 woman in good circumstances, without children, and who adopted him. 

 She was a dissenter, and her house was the resort of all the dissenting 

 ministers in the country ; and it is important to observe that, although 

 a very religious woman, she was so thoroughly liberal as to welcome 

 even the most unorthodox clergymen to her hospitality, and to encour- 

 age the widest latitude of opinion — a circumstance which probably 

 determined the career of her nephew. Joseph was sent to a public 

 school in the neighborhood, and at sixteen had made considerable prog- 

 ress in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. He had thoughts of studying for 

 a clergyman, but, his health failing, he turned his attention to trade, 

 with the idea of settling in Lisbon as a merchant. This induced him 

 to study the modern languages, and he learned French, Italian, and 

 German, without a master. Recovering his health, he abandoned the 

 business scheme, and resumed his former plan of becoming a minister. 

 Having made some progress in mechanical j^hilosophy and metaphys- 

 ics, and dipped into Chaldee, Syriac, and Arabic, and learned a system 

 of short-hand, in 1752 he was sent to the academy at Daventry. 

 Here he spent three years, engaged keenly in studies connected with 

 divinity, and wrote some of his earliest theological tracts. Freedom 

 of discussion was admitted to its full extent in this academy, and the 

 discussions among the students were conducted with perfect good- 

 humor on both sides. Young Priestley, as he tells us himself, usually 

 supported the heterodox opinion ; but he never at any time, as he 

 assures us, advanced arguments which he did not believe to be good, 

 or supported an opinion which he did not consider as true. 



When he left the academy, he settled at Needham, in Sufiblk, as 

 an assistant in a small, obscure dissenting meeting-house, at a salary 

 of $150 a year. From the outset he was an original and independent 

 thinker, and as a preacher he gave free and conscientious expression 

 to the views he was led to adopt. It could hardly be otherwise than 

 that such a course would be distasteful to many people whose religion 



VOL. T. — 31 



