“It would have been unpardonable in a society like that of the _United Irishmen_, if, among their numerous addresses, none was to be found to the firebrand philosopher, Priestley. ‘Farewell,’ say they, in their consolatory address to him,--‘farewell, great and good man! Your change of place will give room for the matchless activity of your genius; and you will take a sublime pleasure in bestowing on Britain the benefit of your future discoveries.’ Every honest man ought to wish that this were true; for the doctor has already made some discoveries of the utmost importance to future chemical emigrants, if he could be prevailed on to publish them. He might let his brethren into the secret of buying land (or rather _rock_) at a dollar an acre, and selling it again at ninepence-halfpenny. This is a sort of anti-chemistry, by which copper is extracted from silver; and the process by which it is accomplished must certainly be a _desideratum_ in the learned world. The doctor might also favour curious foreigners with the feats of those American magi, vulgarly called land-surveyors, whose potent art levels the mountain with the valley, makes the rough way smooth, the crooked straight; whose creative pencil calls into being nodding woods and verdant lawns; and, like the rod of Moses, makes rivulets gush from the solid rock. “‘Farewell,’ continue the _United Irishmen_, ‘farewell, great and good man; but, before you go, we beseech a portion of your parting prayer’ (down upon your marrow-bones, reader) ‘for Archibald Hamilton Rowan, Muir, Palmer, Margarot, and Gerald, who are now, like you, preparing to cross the bleak ocean. Farewell! soon will you embrace your sons on the American shore, Washington will take you by the hand, and the _shade_ of Franklin look down, with calm delight on the first statesman of the age, extending his protection to its first philosopher.’ Here is certainly some mistake in the close of this farewell. What do they mean by the shade of Franklin looking _down_? To look _down_ on a person one must be in an elevated situation; and I fancy it is pretty generally believed, by those who understand the geography of the invisible world, that Franklin’s _shade_, as it is termed, has taken a different route, &c.”