In their political sentiments, and in their views on the great questions which at that time divided parties, the two men had much in common. Lord Shelburne was certainly not unaware of Priestley’s political proclivities, and the pamphlet he had written at Franklin’s instigation on the American question probably expressed his Lordship’s own sentiments. At the same time Priestley was under no obligation to serve Lord Shelburne politically, and there is no evidence that any such service was either expected or rendered. His office was nominally that of librarian, but he had little to do in that capacity beyond arranging and cataloguing the books and numerous manuscripts at Bowood and Lansdowne House and making an index of Lord Shelburne’s private papers. Indeed, Lord Shelburne treated him rather as a companion and friend than as a servant, taking him, in the second year of his engagement, on a journey through Flanders, Holland and Germany as far as Strasburg, and spending a month in Paris. The time he spent on the Continent made him sensible of the benefit of foreign travel, even without the advantage of much conversation with foreigners. Indeed, he says the very sight of new countries, buildings and customs of an unfamiliar type, even the very hearing of a fresh language, however unintelligible, stimulates and widens the mind and gives it new ideas. He saw everything to the best advantage and without any anxiety or trouble, and he had an opportunity of meeting and conversing with every person of eminence wherever he went, the political characters by Lord Shelburne’s connections and the literary and scientific ones by his own. One of these was Magellan, or Magalhæns, a Portuguese Jesuit descended from the great navigator of that name. He resided in England, where he died in, or shortly before, 1790. He had early information on scientific matters from abroad, and was frequently employed in procuring English instruments for foreigners. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society and an active correspondent of Lavoisier’s, to whom he sent all scientific memoirs published in England, Priestley’s among the number. Magellan was the subject of a notable trial at law—one of the last indeed of its kind in England. He was indicted at the suit of a common informer under the statute against saying Mass, but the suit, which was heard before Lord Mansfield, was dismissed on some point of legal informality.