After leaving Calne, Priestley spent some little time in London, and
then, having settled in Birmingham at the desire of his brother-in-law,
he was soon invited to become the minister of a large congregation.
This settlement Priestley considered, at the time, to be "the happiest
event of his life." And well he might think so; for it gave him
competence and leisure; placed him within reach of the best makers of
apparatus of the day; made him a member of that remarkable "Lunar
Society," at whose meetings he could exchange thoughts with such men as
Watt, Wedgwood, Darwin, and Boulton; and threw open to him the pleasant
house of the Galtons of Barr, where these men, and others of less note,
formed a society of exceptional charm and intelligence. [4]

But these halcyon days were ended by a bitter storm. The French
Revolution broke out. An electric shock ran through the nations;
whatever there was of corrupt and retrograde, and, at the same time, a
great deal of what there was of best and noblest, in European society
shuddered at the outburst of long-pent-up social fires. Men's feelings
were excited in a way that we, in this generation, can hardly
comprehend. Party wrath and virulence were expressed in a manner
unparalleled, and it is to be hoped impossible, in our times; and
Priestley and his friends were held up to public scorn, even in
Parliament, as fomenters of sedition. A "Church-and-King" cry was
raised against the Liberal Dissenters; and, in Birmingham, it was
intensified and specially directed towards Priestley by a local
controversy, in which he had engaged with his usual vigour. In 1791,
the celebration of the second anniversary of the taking of the Bastille
by a public dinner, with which Priestley had nothing whatever to do,
gave the signal to the loyal and pious mob, who, unchecked, and indeed
to some extent encouraged, by those who were responsible for order, had