10. WILLIAM BEWLEY was for many years a most distinguished character among the inhabitants of this part of Norfolk. He was not a native of this country, but came hither, it is thought, from the north of England, about 1749, and settled at Great Massingham, as a surgeon and apothecary, where he continued for the remainder of his days, greatly respected as a professional man, but more especially so as a _philosopher_, in which character he was thought inferior to few, if any, of his cotemporaries. With some of the most enlightened of them he was held in high and deserved estimation. Dr. _Burney_ and Dr. _Priestley_ were of that number; the latter of whom he very materially assisted in his experimental pursuits, and was the first who discovered and suggested to him the acidity of mephitic or fixed air. Intimate as these two philosophers appear to have been, they were in some respects, it seems, of very different sentiments. Priestley was an admirer of _Hartley_, and a decided materialist, while Bewley, on the other hand, was a disciple of _Berkeley_, and a firm believer of the ideal system. Between these two systems there is evidently a very striking contrast; yet that occasioned no breach in their friendship, or any coolness or abatement in their esteem for each other. Among theologians, and minor philosophers, much slighter differences might have occasioned (as they generally do) endless jarrings, and an irreconcileable antipathy; but Priestley and Bewley were men of another, and a very different cast, and knew how to entertain the purest friendship for each other, while they held, on some important points, very dissimilar, and even opposite opinions. Their friendship commenced about the time that Priestley published his History of Electricity. Bewley’s critique upon that work, in the Monthly Review, was the means, as the Dr. says, of opening a correspondence between them, which was the source of much satisfaction to him, as long as Mr. Bewley lived. The Dr. used instantly to communicate to him an account of every new experiment that he made, and in return was favoured with his remarks upon them. All that Bewley published of his own (except those articles which he furnished for the Monthly Review) were papers inserted in the Dr’s. volumes _on Air_, all of which, says the doctor, are ingenious and valuable. Always publishing in that manner, he used to call himself _Dr. Priestley’s Satellite_. There was a vein of pleasant wit and humour (as the Dr. informs us) in all his correspondence, which added greatly to the value of it. His Letters to the Dr. would have made several volumes, and the Dr’s to him, still more. He was in his latter years a valetudinarian of a very sickly appearance. When he found himself dangerously ill, and his dissolution fast approaching, he made a point of paying the Dr. a visit before he died. He accordingly made a journey from Massingham to Birmingham, for that purpose, accompanied by Mrs.