and Devereux Milton, of Brasenose College; B.A. were admitted Masters of Arts; Messrs. Thomas Oldham, of St. Edmund Hall; Charles Jennings, of Lincoln College; Edward Edgell, Henry Alford, and Edward Marsh, of Wadham College; James Grooby, of Worcester College; and William Dodson, of St. John's College, were admitted Bachelors of Arts.

In the afternoon of the same day, in Convocation, the Honourable and Right Reverend Charles Dalrymple Lindsay, M.A. of Baliol College, and Lord Bishop of Killaloe, in Ireland, had the degree of Doctor in Divinity conferred on him by Diploma. At the same time, the Rev. Edward Ellerton, M.A. Fellow of Magdalen College; and the Rev. Frederic Barnes, M.A. Student of Christ Church, were admitted Proctors; the Rev. William Cobbold, and James Chapman, of Magdalen College, and James Webber, and Robert Philip Goodenough, of Christ Church, M.A. Pro-Proctors.

17. The Rev. Edward Nares, M.A. lately Fellow of Merton College, was elected by the Heads of Colleges to preach before the Uni versity for the year 1805, at the Lecture founded by the Rev. John Bampton, M.A. late Canon of Salisbury.

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19. The Rev. Richard Mi chell, of Wadham College, and Tho mas Wintle of St. John's College, M.A. and Students in Divinity, were admitted Bachelors in Divinity. Clement Hue, M, A. and Stu dent in Medicine, of Pembroke College, was admitted Bachelor, and to practise in Medicine. The Rev. Walter Kitson, of Oriel College; Henry Colborne Ridley, of Christ Church; William Jones, of Jesus College; and John Markland, of Brasenose College, B.A. were admitted Masters of Arts, Messrs. Daniel Basley, of Merton College; Thomas Blencowe, of Oriel College; Charles Thomas Pettingal, Samuel Wells Thompson, and Thomas Duffield of Christ Church; and Henry Palmer, of St. John's College, were admitted Bachelors of Arts.

CAMBRIDGE.

The Norrisian Prize is this year adjudged to the Rev. John George Durham, of Bene't College, for his Essay on the Providence of God,

April 4. The Rev. Thomas Martin, of Bene't College, is elected into a Fellowship of Clare Hall, on Mr. Borage's foundation,

"EBRUARY 6, at his house in Northumberland, North America, JOSEPH PRIESTLEY, LL.D. F.R.S.

He was born March 24, 1733, at Birstall-field-head, near Leeds in Yorkshire, where his family then carried on, and still continue, an extensive business in the broad-cloth manufacture. He was brought up by his maternal uncle, who having no child of his own, adopted him as his son, and intended him for business; but his propensity to letters

discovering itself at an early age, and increasing daily, he was sent to the dissenting academy, conducted by Dr. Caleb Ashworth, at Daventry. When about twenty vears of age, he was settled as a dissenting teacher at Needham, in Suffolk: but his opinions even then were discovered to militate against the fundamental principles held in common amongst Christians of dif ferent parties, and, in consequence, a division took place between him and his hearers. He was next in

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vited

vited to Namptwich, in Cheshire, where his income being no more, than thirty pounds a-year, he eked out the scanty allowance by acting as a schoolmaster.

At this time there existed a seminary at Warrington, in which the sons of the most opulent dissenters were educated. Thither Mr. Priestley was invited, and taught the belles lettres till the dissolution of that academy, when he received an invitation from Leeds to take charge of the dissenting congregation at that place, which he accepted. After some years residence there, he was recommended by his friend, Dr., Price, to the present Marquis of Lansdowne, then Lord Shelburne, who wished to have in his family a person of a philosophical turn of mind, and who might occasionally assist in the education of his two sons. When in town, Dr. Priestley resided with his Lordship, and had a house at Calne provided for his family, with whom he lived during the summer months, and generally walked to Bowood, his Lordship's seat in the neighbourhood, every day. This situation of honourable leisure the Doctor employed in prosecuting his philosophical pursuits, with all the advantages which so noble and scientific a patron could furnish. He continued in that capacity seven years; and at the end of that period retired with an annuity of 150l. a-year.

Soon after this, he had an invitation, from some considerable persons of the Socinian persuasion, to settle at Birmingham, where he resided, and had a large and handsome meeting till the summer of 1791, when that and his house were burnt down by the rioters. Of that event certainly we are not disposed to speak in any other terms than those of reprobation. Dreadful indeed would it be, if the punishment even of had men and bad principles were to be committed to the blind and heated zeal of a po

pulace. But it cannot be denied that the Doctor and his friends assumed such an air of confidence from the revolution then raging in France, as to give great and just offence to all who felt any regard for the civil and religious constitution of this kingdom. The inenacing manner in which he repeatedly assailed not only the ecclesiastical establishment, but even the essence of our political palladium, as well from the pulpit as the press, roused the indignation of thousands and in the town where he resided, and where his language and conduct were consequently more inmediately marked, he was viewed in no other light than as a firebrand.

The Doctor had entered cordially into the rapturous expectations formed by all men of republican sentiments, in consequence of the direful explosion which had taken place on the continent; and it was known that he had not only been the apologist, in print, of that revolution, but was honoured for it with the distinguishing badge of French citizenship. The lower orders of people in Birmingham, in an honest abliorrence to Jacobinism and its friends, lost sight of that reverence for the laws which should have actuated their minds, and have restrained them from violence.

The celebration of the French revolution, at a tavern in that town, was considered as nothing less than the prelude to similar horrors in this country. The people communicated their apprehensions to one another. Intemperate zcal is regardless of consequences. They assembled at first to manifest their detestation of the democratic faction at the tavern. The multitude increased; and heated by the occasion, they proceeded to acts of hostility against the house. From one extremity they hurried on to another; and connecting with the

great

great object of their dislike all who were known to favour French principles, they committed the inost shameful outrages, for which several of the unfortunate men after wards paid their lives.

These riots were artfully pretended by the Doctor and his party to have originated in the intolerant spirit of the friends of the Church: and he endeavoured to fix upon the clergy the odious charge of having encouraged proceedings which they held in as great abhorrence as himself, or any other men could do. But the fact was that to his own inflammatory harangues and more inflammatory writings the whole were to be attributed; for had he conducted himself like a quiet phi losopher and a peaceable subject, neither his republicanism nor his Socinianism would have excited any public marks of displeasure.

A little after this affair, Dr. Priestley succeeded his old friend Dr. Price in the dissenting meeting at Hackney; but in 1794 he chose to emigrate to America, where he bought a house and some land at Northumberland, a new built town in the province of Pennsylvania.

From the best accounts, how ever, we are well assured that his residence on the trans-atlantic continent has been far from agreeable; for, independent of the loss of a wife and a son, he has experienced more indifference than he expected. He has several times stood candidate for the chaplaincy to the Congress, and invariably has experienced a mortifying disappointment.

The people of America are mostly Presbyterians of the old stamp, in whose opinions and manners much of the old spirit of puritanism may be discovered: To such persons the heterodoxies of Socinianism, especially as refined and mingled with Materialism and Deism, must be peculiarly offensive. In America, therefore, Dr. Priestley found few congenial minds on religious sub

jects: and even on chemistry, his favourite and best pursuit, that science which to his honour he has undoubtedly greatly enlarged and improved, he met with but chilling encouragement. His hypothesis of phlogiston, which had been attacked in France and England, met with zealous opposition in America also. On this subject he has had a long controversy; and though confuted over and over by the great test of all theories, experiment, he pertinaciously maintained the exploded system to the very last. This pertinacity of disposition, indeed, as well as a propensity to controversy, appears to have formed the principal feature in Dr. Priestley's character.

In no instance is it known, we believe, that he ever retracted a single erroneous opinion or assertion, although he has been repeatedly convicted of the grossest blunders, and the most wilful misrepresentations.

This naturally leads us to view, him as a metaphysician and theologian. In the former capacity we first find him waging war with the Scotch Doctors, as he politely termed them, viz. Reid, Oswald, and Beattie, on the moral sense. Here he plundered, but without acknowledgment, all his doctrines on liberty and necessity from the Misanthrope of Malmsbury. The musty tracts of Hobbes, indeed; like the works of Spinoza, were rather known from being often quoted and mentioned, than from being actually read, and therefore our philosopher at Calne considered the old magazine as his own, which he might safely use without the risk of detection. On matter and spirit he engaged in an amicable contention with his friend Dr. Price, who had unquestionably the best sile of the argument. But though this dispute excited some attention, it was only for a moment. The Doctor's next subject brought him more into notice, and to all but himself more

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completely into disgrace. In 1783 he published two volumes of what he was pleased to call a History of the Corruptions of Christianity.

This work he considered as that which would crown him with immortality, by razing orthodoxy to the very foundations. He was weak enough to express such feelings; but he was fated to experience a disappointment and mortification which he never recovered during the remainder of his life. The first confutation which this compilement of heresy received was from a quarter the most unexpected, namely, the Monthly Review for June and August that year. The able critic is now known to have been the acute and learned Badcock, between whom and the Doctor there had previously existed a particular intimacy and correspondencc.

Badcock knew well the Doctor's extreme ignorance of Greek, and that he was, with all his pretences, a total stranger, except by name, to the Fathers and Ecclesiastical Historians. He therefore exposed his fallacies. He ridiculed, and with no sparing hand, the capital absurdities of this dogmatical performance. The historian took fire, and published two pamphlets against the reviewer, who laid on his castigations with a still heavier hand, and the doctor receded sore from the lists. But it was only to meet with his death-wound as a polemic, from a more powerful hand, Bishop Horsley, then Archdeacon of St. Alban's, in a charge to the clergy of that archdeaconry, concisely but plainly laid open the sources of Dr. Priestley's mistakes. He charged him both with plagiarism and ignorance. The Doctor replied to the accusation in a series of letters, to which he received such an answer as most effectually decided his reputation as a historian, and sent his books to the trunk makers.

It would far exceed our limits

were we to proceed farther in the consideration of Dr. Priestley's literary character; for how is it possible we should be able to give a critical review of his multifarious labours in theology, metaphysics, natural philosophy, grammar, and politics. Some of his books, doubtless, have merit, and will be read with advantage, when the rest are deservedly sunk into the gulph of oblivion. Of these we may safely mention his "History of Electricity, and of the present State of Discoveries relating to Vision, Light, and Colours."

Dr. Priestley had been in a declining way some considerable time in consequence of a fever with which he was attacked at Philadelphia in 1801. To the last, however, hc was ardent in his application to literary objects, and on the day of his death dictated to an amanuensis.

Though he professed his cordial belief in the consolations of the Gospel, and had the 11th chapter of St. John read to him, he still adhered to his peculiar sentiments, particularly on the state of the dead, which he considered as a state of sleep until the resurrec

tion.

MARCH 21. The Duke d'ENGHIEN Son of the Duke of Bourbon, and grandson of the Prince of Conde.

The fate of this gallant and unfortunate young prince forms another black incident in the foul life of the Corsican usurper, and is an eternal stain on the annals of degenerated and polluted France.

He was in Germany, at Ettenheim, a principality which, by the plan of indemnities, devolved on the Elector of Baden.

He had resided there three years upon his own estate, and in his own palace, which had been bequeathed to him by his great-uncle the Cardinal de Rohan. On the 15th of March an aid-de-camp of the