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    judgment had led him to advocate . And he lived to afford a long fulfilment to his own prediction of the efficacy of his faith . After lingering in England long enough to follow to the grave his tried friend , Dr . Price , to see other associates fast falling around him , to find himself shunned by the society which represented the

    science of his country , and whose records he had enriched by his discoveries ^ to be wearied by ceaseless calumnies in the senate and from the press , and feel that here was no home for himself or his children ; on the confines of old age , he went forth to die in the land on whose promised destinies his eye , ever brightened by the hopes of humanity , had long been fixed ; deeming it

    happier to live a stranger on the shores of liberty , than be dependent on the tender mercy of tyrants for a footing on his native soil . There , in one of its remoter recesses ,, on the outer margin of civilization , he , who had made a part of the world ' s briskest activity , who had led on the speed of its progress , whose mind had kept pace with its learning , and overtaken its science , and

    outstripped its freedom and its morality , gathered together his resources of philosophy and devotion ; thence he looked forth on the vicissitudes and prospects of Europe , with melancholy but hopeful interest , like the prophet from his mount , on the land whose glories he was not to see . But it was not for such an

    energetic spirit as his to pass instantaneously into the quietude of exile without an irrecoverable shock . He had not that dreamy and idle pietism which could enwrap itself in the mists of its own contemplations , and believe heaven nearer in proportion as earth became less distinct . The shifting sights and busy murmurs that reached him from afar , reminded him of the circulation of social

    toils which had plied his hand and heart . Year after year passed on , and brought him no summons of duty back into the stir of men ; all that he did he had to devise and execute by his own solitary energies , apart from advice and sympathy , and with no hope but that of benefitting the world he was soon to quit . The effort to exchange the habits of the city for those of the cloister was astonishingly successful . But his mind was never the same

    again ; it is impossible not to perceive n decline of power , a tendency to garrulity of style and eccentricity of speculation in hia American publications . And yet , while this slight , though perceptible shade fell upon his intellect , a softened light seemed to spread itself over his character . His feelings , his moral perceptions , were mellowed and ripened by years , and assumed a tenderness and refinement not observable before . Thanks to the

    genial and heavenly clirne which Christianity sheds around the soul , the aged stem burst into blossom . And so it will always be when the mind is really pervaded by as noble a faith as Priestley ' s . There is no law of nature , there are no frosts of time , to shed a snow-blight on the heart . The feelings die out , when their objects come to an end ; aad if there be no future , and the aims of life

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    On the Life , Character , and Writings of Dr . Priettley . 885

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• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), April 2, 1833, page 235, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2612/page/19/