422 PRIESTLEY. 



charities ; they appear generally to have been required 

 for the propagation of their Unitarian opinions, to 

 which the parties were all so zealously attached. 



He settled at Northumberland, in an uncleared dis- 

 trict, where he purchased three hundred acres of land ; 

 and his youngest son, Henry, then a very fine young man 

 of eighteen, devoted himself to the clearing and culti- 

 vating this woodland spot, working with his labourers 

 and sharing their toils. The father himself partook 

 of this labour for two or three hours daily. On Sun- 

 days he frequently preached, and when he visited 

 Philadelphia he always did so. He devoted the rest 

 of his time to his works, particularly his ' Church 

 History ;' and he wrote answers to Paine and Volney. 

 He was much obstructed in his philosophical pursuits 

 by the want of proper accommodation for his apparatus, 

 and he only wrote three tracts on chemical subjects 

 during the ten years of his residence in America ; two 

 of which were merely arguments on phlogiston, and the 

 third alone had any experiments, written eight years 

 before his death. 



At the end of 1795 he suffered a heavy affliction in 

 the death of his son Henry, after a few days' illness ; 

 and in ten months more he also lost his wife. These 

 blows, 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 cer- 

 tain hope of meeting before many years should elapse 

 with those whom he had lost. Indeed, his letters 

 clearly show that he regarded the sundering of these 

 ties far less attentively than their restoration. A few 



