858 Sketch of ihe Life and CharaSer of the late Dr. Priefiley. : {May 1, 
which they were founded; he was a warm 
and open enemy to all unions of ecclefiaf. 
tical with political fyRems, however mo- 
dified and limited. In this refpe€t, as in 
various others, he differed from many of 
his Diffenting brethren ; and, while he was 
engaged in controverfy with the Church, 
he had to fuftin attacks from the oppofite 
quarter. But warfare of this kind he ne. 
ver feared or avoided: it coft him little 
expence of time and none of fpirits; it 
even feemed as if fuch an exercife was fa- 
lutary fo his mental conflitution. 
Few readers of this fketch need be told 
that Dr. Priefiley was at the head of the 
modern Unitarians; a fed&t, of which the 
leading tenet is the proper humanity of 
Chrift, and which confines every {pecies 
of religious worfhip and adoration to the 
One Supreme. If tho'e who have charged 
him with infidelity meant any thing more 
than an inference from his avowed opinions 
on this head, and imegined that he inrend- 
ed more than he declared, and entertain- 
ed a fecret purpoie of undermining the 
Chriitian Revelation, they have been guilty 
ef a calumny from which the leaft exertion 
of cancour and penetration would have 
preferved them. They might have per- 
ecived that he was one who laid open his 
whole ful on every fubject in which he 
was engaged ; and that zeal for Chriftia- 
mity, 23 a- divine difpenfation, and the 
moft valuable of all gifts beflowced upon 
the human kind, was his ruling paffion. 
The favourable reception of the Hiftory 
of Electricity had induced Dr. Prieftley to 
adopt the grand defign, of purfuing the 
rife and progrefs of the other fciences, in 
a hifterical form ; and much of his time 
at Leeds was occupied in his fecond work 
upon this plan, entitled ‘“* The Hiftory 
and Prefent State of Difcoveries relating to 
Vifion, Light, and Cclours,’’ which ap- 
peared ia 2 vols. gto. 1772. This is al- 
lowed to be a performance of great merit; 
pokkfing a lucid arrangement, and that 
clear, peripicuous view of his fubje& 
which it was the author’s peculiar talent 
toafferd. It failed, however, of attain- 
ing the popularity of his Hiftory of Elec- 
tricity, chiefly becanfe it was tmpoffible 
to give adequate notions of many parts 
of the theory of optics without a more ac- 
curate acquaintance with mathematics 
than common readers can be fuppofed to 
poflefs. Pcrhaps too, the writer himfelf 
was fearcely competent to explain the ab- 
ftrufer parts of this fience. It proved to 
be the termination of bis plan 5 but {cience 
was no lofer by the circumftance ; for the 
activity of his mind was turned trom the 
confideration of the difcoveries of others, 
to the attempt of making dilcoveries of 
‘his own, and nothing could be more bril- 
liant than his fuccefs. We find that at 
this period he had begun thofé experiments 
upon air, which have given the greateft 
celebrity to his name as a natural! philo. 
fopher. 
In 1770, Dr. Prieftley quitted Leeds for 
a fituation as different as could well be 
imagined. His philofophical writings, 
and the recommendation of his friend Dr. 
Price, had made him fo favourably known 
to the Earl of Shelburne (now Marquis of 
Lantdown) thac this nobleman, one. of 
the very few in this country, who have . 
affumed the patronage of literature and 
fcience, made him juch advantageous pro- 
polals for refidence with him, that re-« 
gard to his family would not permit them 
to he rejected. It was merely in the capas 
city of his Lordfhip’s librarian, or, rather, 
his iiterary and philofophical companion, 
in the hours that could be devoted to fuch 
purfuits, that Dr. Prieftley became-an in- 
mate with him. The domeftic tuition 
of Lord Shelburne’s fons was already 
committed to a man of merit, and they 
received from Dr. Prieftley no other in- 
ftruction than that of forme courfes of ex- 
perimental philofophy. During this pe- 
riod, his family refided at Calne, in Wile. 
thire, adjacent to Row- wood, the country- 
feat of Lord Sheilburne. Dr. Prieitley 
frequently accompanied h’s noble Patron 
to London, and mixed at his houfe with 
feveral of the eminent characters of the 
time, by whom he was treated with the - 
3 
re{pect due-to his talents and virtues. He 
alfo attended his Lordfhip ina vifit to 
Paris, where he faw many of the moft ce- 
lebrated men of fcience and letters in that 
country; and he aftonifhed them by his 
affertion of a firm belict in revealed relj- 
gion, which had been prefented to their - 
minds in fuch colours, that they thought 
no man of fente could hefitate in rejecting 
it as an idle fable. 
Whilit he was enjoying the advantages 
of this fituation, in every affiftance from 
books and a noble apparatus for the pur- 
fuit of experimental enquiry, he alfo ap- 
peared in the height of his fame as an 
acute metaphyfician. 
lithed his “ Examintion of Dr. Reid on 
the Human Mind; Dr. Beattie on the Na- 
ture and Immutability of Truth: and Dr. 
Ofwald’s Appeal to Common Senfe.” 
The purpote cf this volume was to refute 
the new docirme of common fenfe, em- 
ployed as the criterion of truth by the 
metaphylicians of Scotland; and to pre- 
pare 
. 
In 1775, he pub- - 
