GALILEO.

Or late years, editors, hard pushed for a comment on passing events, have fallen into the practice of saying, "The world moves." I propose to relate the origin of the saying.

In the winter of 1633, a venerable man, enfeebled by disease and borne down by the weight of sixty-nine years, was travelling from Florence to Rome, a toilsome, horseback journey of a hundred and forty-six miles. He had been summoned from his home in this inclemment season by that dread tribunal, the Inquisition, whose displeasure he had provoked. The Inquisition was then in the plenitude of its power. In no land that acknowledged the papal supremacy was there any escape from its omnipresent eye, and its omnipotent arm; for it wielded, at once, all the spiritual authority of the church and all the temporal power of the state.

It was the great Galileo who was journeying toward Rome to submit to the questionings of the Inquisition. His offence was that he knew more than the doctors of the Inquisition knew. He had spent his life in the laborious study of nature. The son of a poor Italian musician, he had exhibited in his youth that aptitude for mechanics which we observe in the boyhood of Newton, as well as a passionate love of literature and music which Newton never possessed. His father, besides being poor, had a family of six children to maintain, and could therefore afford his son very little aid in his studies. Galileo, however, made up in zeal and diligence what he lacked in advantages. Besides mastering the Latin authors, he became really proficient in drawing, and learned to play on severai instruments with so much facility and taste, that he was urged to devote his life to music. At the age of eighteen, he showed

so many and such remarkable proofs of genius, that his father determined, at all hazards, to give him a university education, and he was accordingly entered as a student of medicine at the University of Pisa. But he was not destined to be a physician. Full of curiosity upon all subjects, and, finally, fascinated by the study of mathematics, he won so much distinction as to be appointed professor of mathematics at Pisa before he had completed his twenty-fifth year.

He had scarcely entered the university before he made one of his most important inventions. As the fall of apples from a tree led Newton to the theory of gravitation, so the slow and uniform swinging of a lamp, suspended from the roof of the Pisa cathedral, suggested to Galileo the idea of the pendulum as a measurer of time and as a motive-power of clocks. It was fifty years later, however, before he actually constructed a pendulum clock. We cannot, of course, dwell upon the details of the career of this great man. He had but two objects in his life to acquire knowledge, and to communicate knowledge. Never has there been a more earnest student or a more successful teacher. For his pupils he wrote many excellent treatises upon science far in advance of his age. For the state he constructed several machines of public utility. He invented the thermometer and improved the compass. Hearing one day, by chance, that some one in Holland had invented a contrivance by which distant objects could be seen as though they were near, he entered upon a course of experiments which, in a few days, resulted in the construction of a telescope. At once he began to use the new instrument in the study of the heavens. To his boundless wonder and delight, he discovered that the moon, like the earth, had her mountains and her valleys; that the planet Jupiter went his round accompanied by four moons; that the milky way was composed of innumerable stars; and that there were spots upon the sun.

It had been well for Galileo if he had had a little of the caution and management of Copernicus, who, a century before, had demolished the ancient astronomy without drawing down upon himself or his book the thunders of Rome. Galileo was a bolder man. Overjoyed at his discoveries, he hastened to pub

lish them to the world, and thus called attention anew to the great truths, demonstrated by Copernicus, that the sun is the centre of our system, and that around him all the planets revolve. The Inquisition awoke to the importance of these heresies, denounced the Copernican system as contrary to Scripture, and summoned Galileo to Rome to answer for the crime of supporting it.

Arriving in Rome on the 10th of February, 1633, he was at once placed under arrest in the palace of an ambassador, and, a few days after, he appeared before an assembly of cardinals and inquisitors, where he was permitted to speak in his defence. He began to demonstrate the truth of the Copernican system, as he had been wont to do at the university. His accusers, ignorant of all science, could not comprehend his reasoning. Then he endeavored to explain himself in simpler language, and strove with all his powers to get a notion of the true astronomy into those obtuse and obstinate minds. "But, unfortunately for me," he says, in one of his letters, "my proofs were not apprehended, and, notwithstanding all the pains I took, I could not succeed in making myself understood." They broke in upon his arguments with loud outcries, accusing him of bringing scandal upon the church, and repeating, over and over, the passage of the Bible which declares that Joshua commanded the sun and moon to stand still, and they obeyed him.

In vain Galileo reminded them that the Bible also says that the heavens are solid and are polished like a mirror of brass. In vain he pointed out that the language of the Bible is invariably conformed to the state of science at the time when it was written. The assembled priests only shrugged their shoulders at his reasoning, or interrupted him with derisive and contemptuous shouts.

For seven weeks longer he remained at Rome, under arrest, awaiting the sentence of the Inquisition. On the 22d of June he was again brought before the tribunal, to hear his doom. He was pronounced guilty of heresy, in maintaining, contrary to the express declarations of Scripture, that the sun did not move from cast to west, as it seemed to do, and that the earth, which appeared motionlers, did move round the sun. It was further

declared in his sentence, that the holding of such opinions had rendered him liable to the penalty of death by burning. "From which," continued the sentence, "it is our pleasure that you be absolved, provided that, first, with a sincere heart and unfeigned faith, in our presence, you abjure, curse, and detest the said errors and heresies." Nevertheless, even in that case, he was sentenced to be imprisoned during the pleasure of the court, and to recite once a week, for three years, the seven penitential psalms.

On

Galileo was thus compelled to choose between a solemn denial of demonstrated truth or the most agonizing of deaths. What he ought to have done in these circumstances is a question in morals which has been discussed for two hundred years without result; since it is a question which every one decides according to his own character. He decided to recant. his knees, with one hand upon the Gospel, he pronounced the form of words required: "I abjure, curse, and detest the error and heresy of the motion of the earth, and promise that I will never more teach, verbally or in writing, that the sun is the centre of the universe, and immovable, and that the earth is not the centre of the universe and movable."

Rising from his knees, indignant at the outrage done to truth through him, he muttered between his teeth the words, which will never be forgotten:

ee THE EARTH MOVES, NOTWITHSTANDING!

After his recantation, he was confined for seven months in a spacious house in Rome, and he was allowed to walk at will in its extensive gardens. He was then permitted to return to the neighborhood of Florence, under the surveillance of the Inquisition, and to visit the city when his infirmities permitted.

These events saddened his old age, but he continued to labor at his favorite pursuits with unabated ardor. He wrote a treatise on the motion and resistance of solid bodies, but, fearing to encounter new persecutions, he only thought to have the manuscript preserved from destruction. Confounded and afflicted," he wrote to a friend, "at the bad success of my other works, and having resolved to publish nothing more, I have wished at

least to place in sure hands some copy of my works; and as the particular affection with which you have honored me will certainly make you desirous to preserve them, I have chosen to confide these to you." It was this very work which enabled Newton to deduce the attraction of gravitation from the fall of the apples.

He lived nine years after his recantation, surrounded by affectionate pupils and admiring disciples. Such was his devotion to the study of astronomy, that, at the age of seventy-four, he became totally blind. He survived the loss of sight four years, and died January 9, 1642, aged seventy-eight. On Christmas day of the same year was born the illustrious Newton, who, inheriting the great discoveries of Galileo, added to them the crowning truth that the principle of attraction is not confined in its operation to the earth, but controls the universe.

Galileo was remarkable for the variety of his knowledge. His Latin style was so pure and elegant that Hume ranks his writings with the classics of antiquity; and he was so fond of Italian poetry that he could repeat the whole of Ariosto's longest poem. One of his favorite amusements, all his life, was playing upon the lute, in which he excelled most amateurs. He took great pleasure in cultivating a garden. His manners were exceedingly amiable, and his conversation full of vivacity and grace. Like Newton, he was never married; but, unlike Newton, he left a son and two daughters. After his death, both of his daughters entered a convent and took the veil. He was buried in one of the churches of Florence, where, a century later, a costly and imposing monument was erected over his remains. The complete edition of his works, published at Milan in 1811, is in eleven volumes octavo.