PRIESTLEY. 81 



made under his roof, and with the funds which his 

 disinterested liberality had provided for his learned 

 guest. With whatever difference of sentiments states- 

 men may at any time view Lansdowne House, the 

 lovers of science in after ages will gaze with venera- 

 tion on that magnificent pile, careless of its architec- 

 tural beauties, but grateful for the light which its 

 illustrious founder caused to beam from thence over 

 the whole range of natural knowledge ; and after the 

 structure shall have yielded to the fate of all human 

 works, the ground on which it once stood, consecrated 

 to far other recollections than those of conquest or of 

 power, will be visited by the pilgrim of philosophy 

 with a deeper fervour than any that fills the bosom 

 near the forum or the capitol of ancient Rome. 



In 1780 Priestley settled at Birmingham, where he 

 was chosen minister of the principal dissenting con- 

 gregation. He had left Lansdowne House without 

 any difference to interrupt the friendship of its inmates; 

 and some years afterwards an offer to return, made on 

 the death of Lord Lansdowne's friends, Dunning and 

 Lee, was declined.* A subscription among his friends 

 furnished the means of prosecuting his experimental 

 researches ; and he declined an offer to obtain for him 

 a pension from the government. A shade is cast upon 

 this passage of his history by the circumstance of the 

 pecuniary aid which he thus received being only in a 

 small part rendered necessary for his experimental 

 pursuits. Mr. Parker, the eminent optician, furnished 

 him for nothing all the instruments made by him, as 

 did Mr. Wedgwood all his earthenware utensils. Yet 

 we find in his correspondence a painful thankfulness 

 expressed, in any thing rather than the language of a 



* This offer, and Lord Lansdowne's frank declaration that he never had 

 any fault to find with his guest, entitles us to state that no quarrel, nor 

 anything like it, had occurred. Nevertheless, Priestley's offer to visit hia 

 Lordship when he occasionally came to London was politely declined. 

 Political reasons apparently caused this refusal, 



a 



