152 MEMOIR OF PRIESTLEY. 



to liis private sentiments in matters where the most important of all 

 sentiments must be the love of peace. 



[Note. — We are informed by Lord Brougham that, on settling at 

 Warrington, " Priestley married the daughter of Mr. Wilkinson, a 

 respectable iron master in Wales. She was an amiable woman and 

 endowed with great strength of mind, which was destined afterwards 

 to be severely tried." By her he had three sons and one daughter, 

 of whom the youngest son, Henry, the peculiar companion of his 

 father's agricultural labors at his new home, in Pennsylvania, died at 

 the age of eighteen, in 1795. The mother died ten months later, 

 '' These blows," says Lord B., " though he felt their weight, did not 

 at all crush him ; his resignation was exemplary, and his steady, 

 enthusiastic faith in revelation gave him a certain hope of meeting, 

 before many years should elapse, with those whom he had lost. It 

 was, indeed, quite evident that religion was as much an active princi- 

 ple in him as in any one who ever lived. Not only is it always upper- 

 most in his thoughts, but he even regards temporal concerns of a 

 public nature always in connexion with the Divine superintendence, 

 and even with the prophecies of Scripture. His letters are full of 

 references to those prophecies as bearing on passing events, and he 

 plainly says that, since his removal to America, he should care little 

 for European events but for their connexion with the Old Testament. 

 He also looked for an actual and material second coming of Christ 

 upon earth." 



The descendants of Dr. Priestley appear, from an account received 

 through the courtesy of a grandson, Joseph R. Priestley, to be widely 

 dispersed. Not only do several of them remain in his native country, 

 at London and Birmingham, but others are to be found at Northum- 

 berland, Pennsylvania, where he settled in this country ; at New 

 Orleans ; at Atlanta, in Georgia ; and even at Melbourne, in Austra- 

 lia. He was buried at Northumberland, and the following is the 

 inscription on his tomb : 



To 



The memory of the Reverend 

 Dr. Joseph Priestley, 

 Who departed this life on the 6 Feb., 1804, 

 Anno a3tatis LXXI. 



'' Return unto my rest, oh my soul, for the Lord hath dealt bounti- 

 fully with thee : I will lay me down in peace and sleep till I awake 

 in the morning of the resurrection."] 



