416 PRIESTLEY. 



scientific views which directed the contrivance of all 

 their processes, never leading them to make any trial 

 without some definite object in view, prevented them 

 from performing many experiments, from stooping, as 

 it were, to try things which Priestley did not disdain 

 to try from his more empirical turn of mind what 

 Mr. Watt, in a letter, calls "his random haphazarding." 



In 1779, when Captain Cook was preparing to sail 

 upon his second voyage, Mr. Banks, who took a great 

 interest in it from having been engaged in the first, 

 invited Dr. Priestley to accompany the Captain as as- 

 tronomer to the expedition. Advantageous terms were 

 proposed, including a provision for his family. He 

 entertained the proposal, and then agreed to it ; but 

 objections were taken by the clerical members of the 

 Board of Longitude, not to his ignorance of astronomy 

 and of natural history, but to his Socinian principles in 

 religion, which one might have supposed could exer- 

 cise but a limited influence upon his observations of 

 the stars and of plants. I know not if the same 

 scientific authorities objected, on like grounds, in the 

 council of the Royal Society, to receiving papers upon 

 his chemical discoveries. It is certain that a like in- 

 fluence prevented Professor Playfair from afterwards 

 proceeding to India, where he had designed to prosecute 

 his inquiries into the science of the Hindoos. Such 

 passages stamp the history of a great nation with 

 indelible infamy in the eyes of the whole world. 



In 1773, when his fame had been established by his 

 first discoveries, and the Royal Society had crowned his 

 paper with their medal, Priestley accepted an invita- 

 tion from Lord Shelburne, afterwards first Marquis of 



