finished
his second term of office. 'I went to take leave of the late
president. He seemed not to be in very good spirits. He invited me to
Mt. Vernon, and said he thought he should hardly go from home twenty
miles as long as he lived.'

Priestley was not to have the full measure of the rest which he
coveted. He had left England to escape persecution, and persecution
followed him. Cobbett, who had assailed him in a scurrilous pamphlet
at the time of his emigration, continued his attacks. Priestley was
objectionable because he was a friend of France. Moreover he had
opinions about things, some of which he freely expressed,--a habit he
had contracted so early in life as to render it hopeless that he
should ever break himself of it. Cobbett's virulence was so great as
to excite the astonishment of Mr. Adams, who said to Priestley, 'I
wonder why the man abuses you;' when a hint from Adams, Priestley
thought, would have prevented it all. But it was not easy to control
William Cobbett. Adams may have thought that Cobbett was a being
created for the express purpose of being let alone. There are such
beings. Every one knows, or can guess, to what sort of animal Churton
Collins compared Dean Swift, when the Dean was in certain moods.
William Cobbett, too, had his moods.

Yet it is impossible to read Priestley's letters between 1798 and 1801
without indignation against those who preyed upon his peace of mind.
He writes to Lindsay: 'It is nothing but a firm faith in a good
Providence that is my support at present: but it is an effectual one.'
His 'never failing resource' was the 'daily study of the Scriptures.'
In moments of depression he loved to read the introduction to
Hartley's second volume, those noble passages beginning: 'Whatever be
our doubts, fears, or anxieties, whether selfish or social, whether
for time or eternity, our only hope and refuge must be in the infinite
power, knowledge and goodness of God.'

Priestley was indeed a remarkable man. His services to science were
very great. He laid the foundations of notable structures which,
however, other men were to rear. He might have been a greater man had
he been less versatile. And yet his versatility was one source of his
greatness. He clung to old-fashioned notions, defending the doctrine
of 'philogiston' after it had been abandoned by nearly every other
chemist of repute. For this he has been ridiculed. But he was not
ridiculous, he was singularly open-minded. He