Mr. Amos speaks as well as Mr. Burke; but in general the
speakers are more argumentative, and less rhetorical. And whereas
there are with you not more than ten or a dozen tolerable
speakers, here every member is capable of speaking.

While none of the letters to Priestley's friends mention a family event
of some importance the _American Advertiser_, February 13, 1796,
announced that

Mr. William Priestley, second son of the celebrated Dr. Joseph
Priestley, was married to the agreeable Miss Peggy Foulke, a young
lady possessed with every quality to render the marriage state
happy.

This occurred very probably just before the Doctor set forth from
Northumberland to make his first Philadelphia visit. It is singular that
little is said of the son William by the Doctor. Could it be that, in
some way, he may have offended his parent? In his _Memorial_ Rush,
writing in the month of March, 1796, noted:

Saw Dr. Priestley often this month. Attended him in a severe
pleurisy. He once in his sickness spoke of his second son,
William, and wept very much.

Busy as he was in spreading his religious tenets, in fraternizing with
congenial scientific friends, his thoughts would involuntarily turn back
to England:

Here, though I am as happy as this country can make me ... I do
not feel as I did in England.

By May, 1796, he had finished his discourses, although he proposed
concluding with one emphatically Unitarian in character. This was
expected by his audience, which had been quietly prepared for it and
received it with open minds and much approval.

On his return to Northumberland he promptly resumed his work on the
"Church History," but was much disturbed because of the failure of his
correspondents in writing him regularly, so he became particularly
active in addressing them. But better still he punctuated his
composition of sermons, the gradual unfolding of his Church History, and
religious and literary studies in general, with experimental
diversions, beginning with the publication (1796) of an octavo brochure
of 39 pages from the press of Dobson in Philadelphia, in which he
addressed himself more especially to Berthollet, de la Place, Monge,
Morveau, Fourcroy and others on "Considerations on the Doctrine of
Phlogiston and the Decomposition of Water." It is the old story in a
newer dress. Its purpose was to bring home to Americans afresh his
particular i