recommendation of manner, possessed some talent with unsullied probity, added to indefatigable perseverance and labour." He adds that his speeches were intolerably long and dull, and that "his rising always operated like a dinner bell" (Memoirs, iii. 490). Writings Hartley's writings are mostly political, and set forth the arguments of the extreme liberals of his time. In 1764 he wrote a vigorous attack on the Bute administration, "inscribed to the man who thinks himself a minister." His most important writings are his Letters on the American War, published in London in 1778 and 1779, and addressed to his constituents. "The road," he writes, "is open to national reconciliation between Great Britain and America. The ministers have no national object in view . . . the object was to establish an influential dominion of the crown by means of an independent American revenue uncontrolled by parliament." He seeks throughout to vindicate the opposition to the war. In 1794 he printed at Bath a sympathetic Argument on the French Revolution, addressed to his parliamentary electors. Hartley edited his father's well-known Observations on Man, in London 1791 and (with notes and additions) in 1801. In 1859 a number of Hartley's papers were sold in London. Six volumes of letters and other documents relating to the peace went to America and passed into the collection of L.Z. Leiter of Washington, D.C.; others are in the British Museum. Inventions In his last years, Hartley studied chemistry and mechanics. In 1774 he published Account of a Method of Securing Buildings and Ships against Fire, by placing thin iron planks under floors and attaching them to the ceilings, partly to prevent immediate access of the fire, and partly to stop the free supply of air. He built a house on Putney Heath to verify the efficacy of his invention. An obelisk was built on the heath, adjacent to Tibbet's corner, 1776 marking the Lord Mayor of London's decision to give Hartley £2,500 for work on his fire plates. It makes mention of its being erected on the 110th anniversary of the Great Fire of London. On the occasion of a fire at Richmond House, on 21 December 1791, he wrote a pamphlet urging the value of his fire plates. The brick obelisk with heavily inscribed foundation stone still stands on Putney Heath, near where the A219 veers from the A3 at Tibbet's Corner, towards Putney. There is