Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: A memoir of John Deakin Heaton, M. D., of Leeds. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University.
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![or two, whose tastes ];iy ratlicr in tlic dircriion f,r science or literature than of theology, and wlio Imd no idea of measuring swords witli their exalted episcopalian bretliren on the subject of disestaljlish- ment. Of sucli men Leeds was not devoid, as the mention of the name of Priestley will suffice to remind my readers. Tlie magistrates, the gentry, and even the better class of professional men and merchants were naturally attracted to the same common centre ; so that, a hundred years ago, tlie shop of the leading bookseller of a provincial town was a place of far more importance than it can now claim to be, and supplied in a great degree the lack of those institutions which have since been established in all directions, for the promotion of social inter- course and of hterary and scientific inquiry in every conceivable mode. The talk which went on from day to day in such a place, though necessarily often frivolous and trivial, was upon the whole interesting and not seldom instructive ; and no young man could listen to it without getting a certain amount of enhghtenment which would hardly have come to him in any other branch of business. Perhaps it was this fact, or perhaps it may have been the actual superiority of the bookseUing busi- ness in those days compared with its present state, but whatever may have been the cause, it is certain that the old-fashioned bookseller of the last century D](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21209741_0047.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
