Priestley's death was deeply mourned throughout the land. The public prints brought full and elaborate accounts of his life, and touching allusions to the fullness of his brilliant career. Such expressions as these were heard,-- As a metaphysician he stands foremost among those who have attempted the investigation of its abstruse controversies. As a politician he assiduously and successfully laboured to extend and illustrate those general principles of civil liberty which are happily the foundation of the Constitution of his adopted Country,-- His profound attention to the belles-lettres, and to the other departments of general literature, has been successfully exemplified among his other writings, by his lectures on oratory and criticism, and on general history and policy,-- Of the most important and fashionable study of _Pneumatic Chemistry_ he may fairly be said to be the father. He was a man of restless activity, but he uniformly directed that activity to what seemed to him the public good, seeking neither emolument nor honour from men. Dr. Priestley was possessed of great ardour and vivacity of intellect.... His integrity was unimpeachable; and even malice itself could not fix a stain on his private character. And what a splendid tribute is contained in the following passages from Cuvier: Priestley, loaded with glory, was modest enough to be astonished at his good fortune, and at the multitude of beautiful facts, which nature seemed to have revealed to him alone. He forgot that her favours were not gratuitous, and if she had so well explained herself, it was because he had known how to oblige her to do so by his indefatigable perseverance in questioning her, and by the thousand ingenious means he had taken to snatch her answers from her. Others carefully hide that which they owe to chance; Priestley seemed to wish to ascribe all his merit to fortuitous circumstances, remarking, with unexampled candour, how many times he had profited by them, without knowing it, how many times he was in possession of new substances without having perceived them; and he never dissimulated the erroneous views which sometimes directed his efforts, and from which he was only undeceived by experience. These confessions did honour to his modesty, without disarming jealousy. Those to whom their own ways and methods had never discovered anything called him a simple worker of experiments, without method and without an object "it is not astonishing," they added, "that among so many trials and combinations, he should find some that were fortunate." But real natural philosophers were not duped by these selfish criticisms.