[20] “Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air,” vol. ii. p. 60. The italics are Priestley’s own. [21] “In all the newspapers and most of the periodical publications I was represented as an unbeliever in Revelation, and no better than an atheist.”—“Autobiography,” Rutt. vol. i. p. 124. “On the walls of houses, etc., and especially where I usually went, were to be seen, in large characters, ‘MADAN FOR EVER; DAMN PRIESTLEY; NO PRESBYTERIANISM; DAMN THE PRESBYTERIANS,’ etc. etc.; and, at one time, I was followed by a number of boys, who left their play, repeating what they had seen on the walls, and shouting out, ‘_Damn Priestley; damn him, damn him, for ever, for ever_,’ etc. etc. This was no doubt a lesson which they had been taught by their parents, and what they, I fear, had learned from their superiors.”—“Appeal to the Public on the Subject of the Riots at Birmingham.” [22] First Series. “On Some of the Peculiarities of the Christian Religion.” Essay I. Revelation of a Future State. [23] Not only is Priestley at one with Bishop Courtenay in this matter, but with Hartley and Bonnet, both of them stout champions of Christianity. Moreover, Archbishop Whately’s essay is little better than an expansion of the first paragraph of Hume’s famous essay on the Immortality of the Soul:—“By the mere light of reason it seems difficult to prove the immortality of the soul; the arguments for it are commonly derived either from metaphysical topics, or moral, or physical. But it is in reality the Gospel, and the Gospel alone, that has brought _life and immortality to light_.” It is impossible to imagine that a man of Whately’s tastes and acquirements had not read Hume or Hartley, though he refers to neither. [24] “Essay on the First Principles of Government.” Second edition, 1771, p. 13. [25] “Utility of Establishments,” in “Essay on First Principles of Government,” p. 198, 1771. [26] In 1732 Doddridge was cited for teaching without the Bishop’s leave, at Northampton. [27] The recent proceedings of the House of Commons throw a doubt, which it is to be hoped may speedily be removed, on the accuracy of this statement. (September 1881.) [28] “Discours sur les révolutions de la surface du globe,” _Recherches sur les ossemens fossiles_, Ed. iv. t. i. p. 185. [29] “On the Eclipses of Agathocles, Thales, and Xerxes,” _Philosophical Transactions_, vol. cxliii. [30] There is every reason to believe that living plants, like living animals, always respire, and, in respiring, absorb oxygen and give off carbonic acid; but, that in green plants exposed to daylight or to the electric light, the quantity of oxygen evolved in consequence of the decomposition of carbonic acid by a special apparatus which green plants possess exceeds that absorbed in the concurrent respiratory process. [31] Darwin, “Insectivorous Plants,” p. 289. [32] I purposely assume that the air with which the bean is supplied in the case stated contains no ammoniacal salts.