The favours that I received from my two brothers-in-law deserve my most grateful acknowledgments. They acted the part of kind and generous relations, especially at the time when I most wanted assistance. It was in consequence of Mr. John Wilkinson’s proposal, who wished to have us nearer to him, that, being undetermined where to settle, I fixed upon Birmingham, where he soon provided a house for me. My apology for accepting of these large benefactions is, that besides the great expence of my philosophical and even my theological studies, and the education of three sons and a daughter, the reputation I had, justly or unjustly, acquired brought on me a train of expences not easy to describe, to avoid or to estimate; so that without so much as keeping a horse (which the kindness of Mr. Russel made unnecessary) the expence of housekeeping, &c. was more than double the amount of any regular income that I had. I consider my settlement at Birmingham as the happiest event in my life, being highly favorable to every object I had in view, philosophical or theological. In the former respect I had the convenience of good workmen of every kind, and the society of persons eminent for their knowledge of chemistry, particularly Mr. Watt, Mr. Keir, and Dr. Withering. These with Mr. Boulton, and Dr. Darwin, who soon left us by removing from Litchfield to Derby, Mr. Galton, and afterwards Mr. Johnson of Kenelworth and myself dined together every month, calling ourselves the _lunar society_, because the time of our meeting was near the full moon. With respect to theology, I had the society of Mr. Hawkes, Mr. Blyth, and Mr. Scholefield, and his assistant Mr. Coates, and, while he lived Mr. Palmer, before of Macclesfield. We met and drank tea together, every fortnight. At this meeting we read all the papers that were sent for the Theological Repository, which I revived some time after my coming hither, and in general our conversation was of the same cast as that with my fellow tutors at Warrington. Within a quarter of a year of my coming to reside at Birmingham, Mr. Hawkes resigned, and I had an unanimous invitation to succeed him, as colleague with Mr. Blyth, a man of a truly christian temper. The congregation we serve is the most liberal, I believe, of any in England; and to this freedom the unwearied labours of Mr. Bourne had eminently contributed.