PEIESTLEY 89 



visit France, where he might communicate personally 

 with his English friends ; and he even thought of 

 making a purchase in that country on which he might 

 reside during a part of each year. So nearly did he 

 contemplate this removal, that we find him desiring 

 the answers to letters he was writing might be sent to 

 the care of Messrs. Perregaux at Paris. The revolu- 

 tion of Fructidor, however (4th September, 1797), put 

 an end to all prospects of peace, and the war soon 

 raged in every quarter with redoubled fury. He seems 

 now to have derived his chief comfort from tracing the 

 fancied resemblance between the events passing be- 

 fore him and the prophecies in Scripture; though 

 occasionally he felt much puzzled, and the book of 

 Daniel, especially, appears to have given him trouble 

 and perplexity. When the peace came at last, his 

 health was too much broken to permit any plans to be 

 executed such as he had four years before contemplated. 



In 1802 he became a confirmed invalid, suffering 

 from internal, and apparently organic, derangement. 

 His illness was long and lingering, and he suffered 

 great pain with perfect patience for two years. The 

 prospect of death which he had before him did not 

 relax his application to literary labour, his faculties 

 remaining entire to the last. Neither did that awful 

 certainty, ever present to his mind, affect him with 

 sorrow or dismay. The same unshaken belief in a 

 future state, the same confident hope of immortal life 

 which had supported him under his affliction for the 

 death of others, cheered him while contemplating the 

 approach of his own. In this happy frame of mind 

 he gently expired on the 6th of February, 1804, in 

 the seventy- second year of his age. 



His character is a matter of no doubt, and it is of a 

 high order. That he was a most able, most indus- 

 trious, most successful student of nature, is clear ; and 

 that his name will for ever be held in grateful remem- 

 brance by aU^^rfe^g^^te physical science, and 



