been built in the Middle Ages; and above this a curious | rocky spur opposite Tiberias. Two large ruined buildings, hillock, with an artificial rock-platform, called el 'Oreimel, "the little knoll." Immediately to the north-east a preci pice projects to the lake, and the aqueduct from the Tâbghah spring is led to an ancient rock-cut channel, which seer to have been once intended for a road in the face of the cliff. In the 17th century Quaresmius speaks of this place, Minyeh, as the site of Capernaum. In the 14th Isaac Chelo was apparently shown the same site as containing the tomb of Nahum, and as being the "city of the Minai." The "Minai," or "sorcerers," are mentioned in the Talmud, and by this title the Jews stigmatized the early Christians; and these "Minai" are called in one passage of the Talmud "sons of Capernaum." There is thus a close connexion between this Minyeh-named from the Minai-and the town of Capernaum. The position of the site is also suitable for that of Capernaum, being in the plain of Gennesareth, two miles from the "round spring," or fountain of Capharnaum. No other site of any importance exists in the plain of Gennesareth. See CAPERNAUM.

South of the plain of Gennesareth is the undisputed site of the New Testament town of Magdala. A few lotus trees and some rock-cut tombs are here found beside a miserable mud hamlet on the hill slope, with a modern tomb-house or kubbeh. Passing beneath rugged cliffs a recess in the hills is next reached, where stands Tabarîya, the ancient Tiberias or Rakkath, containing 3000 inhabitants, more than half of whom are Jews. The walls, flanked with round towers, and now partly destroyed by the earthquake of 1837, were built by Dhahr el 'Amr, as was the serai or court-house. The two mosques, now partly ruinous, were erected by his sons. There are remains of a crusading church, and the tomb of the celebrated Maimonides is shown in the town, while Rabbi Akiba and Rabbi Meir lie buried outside. The ruins of the ancient city, including granite columns and traces of a sea-wall with towers, stretch southwards a mile beyond the modern town. An aqueduct in the cliff once brought water a distance of 9 miles from the south.

Kerak, at the south end of the lake, is an important site on a peninsula surrounded by the water of the lake, by the Jordan, and by a broad water ditch, while on the north-west a narrow neck of land remains. The plateau thus enclosed is partly artificial, and banked up 50 or 60 feet above the water. A ruined citadel remains on the north-west, and on the east was a bridge over the Jordan; broken pottery and fragments of sculptured stone strew the site. The ruin of Kerak answers to the description given by Josephus of the city of Tarichea, which lay 30 stadia from Tiberias, the hot baths being between the two cities. Tariche was situated, as is Kerak, on the shore below the cliffs, and partly surrounded by water, while before the city was a plain (the Ghor). Pliny further informs us that Tariche was at the south end of the Sea of Galilee. Sinnabreh, a ruin on a spur of the hills close to the lastmentioned site, is undoubtedly the ancient Sinnabris, where Vespasian (Joseph., B. J., iii. 9, 7) fixed his camp, advancing from Scythopolis (Beisân) on Tariches and Tiberias. Sinnabris was 30 stadia from Tiberias, or about the distance of the ruin now existing.

The eastern shores of the Sea of Galilee have been less fully explored than the western, and the sites are not so perfectly recovered. The town of Hippos, one of the cities of Decapolis, was situated 30 stadia from Tiberias, and 60 stadia from Gadara (Umm Keis). It is conjectured that the town Susitha, mentioned in the Talmud, is the same place, and the name Susyeh seems to have existed east of the Sea of Galilee at a late period. Susitha from "sus," meaning "horse," is, etymologically at least, suggestive of the Greek "hippos." The site is at present unknown. Kalat_el_Hosn (" castle of the stronghold") is a ruin on a

remain, with traces of an old street and fallen columns and capitals. A strong wall once surrounded the town; a narrow neck of land exists on the east where the rock has been scarped. Rugged valleys enclose the site on the north and south; broken sarcophagi and rock-cut tombs are found beneath the ruin. This site answers to the de scription Josephus gives of Gamala, an important fortress besieged by Vespasian (Bell. Jud., iv. 1, 1). Gersa, an insignificant ruin north of the last, is thought to represent the Gerasa or Gergesa of the 4th century, situated east of the lake; and the projecting spur of hill south of this ruin is conjectured to be the place where the swine "ran violently down a steep place" (Matt. viii. 32). The site of Bethsaida Julias, east of Jordan, is also unknown. It has been supposed (and the theory is supported by even so important an authority as Reland) that two separate places named Bethsaida are mentioned in the New Testament. The grounds for this conclusion are, however, very insufficient; and only one Bethsaida is mentioned by Josephus. It was near the Jordan inlet, on the east side of the river, and under its later Greek name of Julias, it is mentioned, with Hippos, by Pliny. The site usually pointed out is the ruin of et Tell, north of the Batihah plain; the remains are, however, modern and insignificant. Just south of the same plain is a ruined village called Mes'aidîyeh, the name of which approaches Bethsaida in sound but not in meaning. This is the site pointed out by Vandevelde, and it is possible that the course of Jordan has shifted westwards, and that the old mouth is marked by the two creeks running into the shore on the east, in which case the site of Mes'aidiyeh might be accepted as the Bethsaida of the gospels, which appears to have been east of Jordan.

Literature. The most important works on the subject of Galilee and the Sea of Galilee are the following:-Robinson's Biblical Researches; Stanley's Sinai and Palestine; Tristram's Land of Israel; Warren and Wilson's Recovery of Jerusalem; Conder's Tent Work in Palestine; and the Memoirs of the Survey of Palestinė (sheets 1-6, 8, 9). (C. R. C.) {

The

GALILEO. Galileo Galilei (1564-1642), one of the earliest and greatest of experimental philosophers, was born at Pisa, February 18, 1564. His father, Vincenzo, was an impoverished descendant of a noble Florentine house, which had exchanged the surname of Bonajuti for that of Galilei, on the election, in 1343, of one of its members, Galileo de Bonajuti, to the college of the twelve Buonuomini. family, which was fifteen times represented in the signoria, and in 1445 gave a gonfalonier to Florence, flourished with the republic and declined with its fall. Vincenzo Galilei was a man of better parts than fortune. He was a competent mathematician, wrote with considerable ability on the theory and practice of music, and was especially dis tinguished amongst his contemporaries for the grace and skill of his performance upon the lute. By his wife, Giulia de' Ammannati of Pistoja, he had two sons, Galileo and Michelangiolo, and two daughters, Virginia and Livia! From his earliest childhood Galileo was remarkable for intellectual aptitude, as well as for mechanical invention. His favourite pastime was the construction of toy-machines, not the less original and ingenious that their successful working was usually much hindered by the scarcity of suitable materials. His application to literary studies was equally conspicuous. In the monastery of Vallombrosa, near Florence, where his education was principally conducted, he not only made himself acquainted with the best Latin authors, but acquired a fair command of the Greek tongue, thus laying the foundation of the brilliant and elegant style for which his writings were afterwards distinguished. From one of the monks he also received instruction in logic, according to the system then in vogue" but_the_futilities of the science revolted, while its subtleties

failed to interest his understanding, and he was soon permitted to abandon a study so distasteful to him. A document published by M. Selmi in 1864 proves that he was at this time so far attracted towards a religious life as to have joined the novitiate of the order; but his father, who had other designs for him, seized the opportunity of an attack of ophthalmia to withdraw him permanently from the care of the monks. Having had personal experience of the unremunerative character both of music and of mathematics, he desired that his son should apply himself to the more profitable study of medicine, and, not without some straining of his slender resources, placed him, before he had completed his eighteenth year, at the university of Pisa. He accordingly matriculated, November 5, 1581, and immediately entered upon attendance at the lectures of the celebrated physician and botanist, Andrea Cesalpino

The natural gifts of the young student, not less multifarious than those of an earlier Tuscan prodigy, Leonardo da Vinci, seemed at this time equally ready to develop in any direction towards which choice or hazard might incline them. In musical skill and invention he already vied with the best professors of the art in Italy; his personal taste would have led him to choose painting as his profession, and one of the most eminent artists of his day, Lodovico Cigoli, owned that to his judgment and counsel he was mainly indebted for the success of his works; his wit and eloquence gave promise that he would one day add to the literary glories of his country; while his mathematical and mechanical genius only awaited a suitable opportunity for full display and development. In 1583, while watching the vibrations of the great bronze lamp still to be seen swinging from the roof of the cathedral of Pisa, he observed that, whatever the range of its oscillations, they were invariably executed in equal times. The experimental verification of this fact led him to the important discovery of the isochronism of the pendulum. He at first applied the new principle to pulse-measurement, and more than fifty years later turned it to account in the construction of an astronomical clock. Up to this time he was entirely ignorant of mathematics, his father having carefully held him aloof from a study which he rightly apprehended would lead to his total alienation from that of medicine. Accident, however, frustrated this purpose. A lesson in geometry, given by Ostilio Ricci to the pages of the grandducal court, then temporarily resident at Pisa, chanced to have Galileo for an unseen listener; his attention was riveted, his dormant genius was roused, and he threw all bis energies into the new pursuit thus unexpectedly presented to him. With Ricci's assistance, he rapidly mastered the elements of the science, and eventually extorted his father's reluctant permission to exchange Hippocrates and Galen for Euclid and Archimedes. In 1586 he was withdrawn from the university, through lack of means, before he had taken a degree, and returned to Florence, where his family habitually resided. We next hear of him as lecturing before the Florentine Academy on the site and dimensions of Dante's Inferno; and he shortly afterwards published an essay descriptive of his invention of the hydrostatical balance, which rapidly made his name known throughout Italy. His first patron was the Marchese Guidubaldo del Monte of Pesaro, a man eminent for his scientific attainments, as well as influential by his family connexions. At his request he wrote, in 1588, a treatise on the centre of gravity in solids, which obtained for him, together with the title of "the Archimedes of his time," the honourable though not lucrative post of mathematical lecturer at the Pisan university. During the ensuing two years (1589-91) he carried on that remarkable series of experiments, by which he established the first principles of dynamical science, and by which he earned for himself the

undying hostility of the bigoted Aristotelians of that day.
From the leaning tower of Pisa he afforded to all the pro-
fessors and students of the university ocular demonstration
of the falsehood of the Peripatetic dictum that heavy bodies
fall with velocities proportional to their weights, and with
unanswerable logic demolished all the time-honoured maxims
of the schools regarding the motion of projectiles, and
elemental weight or levity. But while he convinced, he
failed to conciliate his adversaries. The keen sarcasm of
his polished rhetoric was not calculated to soothe the
susceptibilities of men already smarting under the depriva-
tion of their most cherished illusions. He seems, in addi-
tion, to have compromised his position with the grand-ducal
family by the imprudent candour with which he condemned
a machine for clearing the port of Leghorn, invented by
Giovanni de' Medici, an illegitimate son of Cosmo I.
Princely favour being withdrawn, private rancour was free
to show itself. He was publicly hissed at his lecture, and
found it prudent to resign his professorship and withdraw
to Florence in 1591. Through the death of his father in
July of that year family cares and responsibilities devolved
upon him as eldest son, and thus his nomination to the chair
of mathematics at the university of Padua, secured by the in-
fluence of the Marchese Guidubaldo with the Venetian senate,
was welcome, as affording a relief from pecuniary embarrass-
ment, no less than as opening a field for scientific distinction.
His residence at Padua, which extended over a period of
eighteen years, from 1592 to 1610, was a course of unin-
terrupted prosperity. His appointment was three times
renewed, on each occasion with expressions of the highest
esteem on the part of the governing body, and his yearly
salary was progressively raised from 180 to 1000 florins.
His lectures were attended by persons of the highest dis-
tinction from all parts of Europe, and such was the charm
of his demonstrations that a hall capable of containing 2000
people had eventually to be assigned for the accommodation
of the overflowing audiences which they attracted. His
ingenious invention of the proportional compasses—an
instrument still used in geometrical drawing-dates from
1597; and about the same time he constructed the first
thermometer, consisting of a bulb and tube filled with air
In this
and water, and terminating in a vessel of water.
Instrument, the results of varying atmospherio pressure were
not distinguishable from the expansive and contractive
effects of heat and cold, and it became an efficient measure
of temperature only when Rinieri, in 1646, introduced the
improvement of hermetically sealing the liquid in glass.
The substitution, in 1670, of mercury for water completed
the modern thermometer.

Galileo seems, at an early period of his life, to have adopted the Copernican theory of the solar system, and was deterred from avowing his opinions-as is proved by his letter to Kepler of August 4, 1597-by the fear of ridicule rather than of persecution. The appearance, in September 1604, of a new star in the constellation Serpentarius, afforded him indeed an opportunity, of which he eagerly availed himself, for making an onslaught upon the Aristotelian axiom of the incorruptibility of the heavens; but he continued to conform his public teachings in the main to Ptolemaic principles, until the discovery of a novel and potent implement of research placed at his command startling and hitherto unsuspected evidence as to the constitution and mutual relations of the heavenly bodies. Galileo was not the original inventor of the telescope.1 That

1 The word telescope, from rîλe, far, okоréw, to view, was invented by Demiscianus, an eminent Greek scholar, at the request of Prince Cesi, president of the Lyncean Academy. It was used by Galileo as early as 1612, but was not introduced into English until much later. In 1655 the word telescope was inserted in Bagwell's Mysterics of Astronomy, as a term requiring explanation, trunk or cylinder being. commonly used instead

En

the most eminent personages at the pontifical court. couraged by the flattering reception accorded to him, he ventured, in his Letters on the Solar Spots, printed at Rome in 1613, to take up a more decided position towards that doctrine on the establishment of which, as he avowed in a letter to Belisario Vinta, secretary to the grand-duke, “all his life and being henceforward depended." Even in the time of Copernicus some well-meaning persons had suspected a discrepancy between the new view of the solar system and certain passages of Scripture a suspicion strengthened by the anti-Christian inferences drawn from it by Giordano Bruno; but the question was never formally debated until Galileo's brilliant discoveries, enhanced by his formidable dialectic and enthusiastic zeal, irresistibly challenged for it the attention of the authorities. Although he earnestly deprecated the raising of the theological issue, and desired nothing better than permission to pursue unmolested his physical demonstrations, it must be admitted that, the discussion once set on foot, he threw himself into it with characteristic impetuosity, and thus helped to precipitate a decision which it was his ardent wish to avert. In December 1613 a Benedictine monk named Benedetto Castelli, at that time professor of mathematics at the uni

honour must be assigned to Hans Lippershey, an obscure | Quirinal Palace the telescopic wonders of the heavens to optician of Middleburg, who, ou the 21st of October 1608, offered to the states of Holland three instruments by which the apparent size of remote objects was increased. But here his glory ends, and that of Galileo begins. The rumour of the new invention, which reached Venice in April on May 1609, was sufficient to set the Italian philosopher on the track; and after one night's profound meditation on the principles of refraction, he succeeded in producing a telescope of threefold magnifying power. Upon this first attempt he rapidly improved, until he attained to a power of thirty-two, and his instruments, of which he manufactured hundreds with his own hands, were soon in request in every part of Europe. Two lenses only-a plauoconvex anda plano-concave-were needed for the composition of each, and this simple principle is that still employed in the construction of opera-glasses. Galileo's direction of his new instrument to the heavens formed an era in the history of astronomy. Discoveries followed upon it with astounding rapidity and in bewildering variety. The Sidereus Nuncius, published at Venice in the early part of 1610, contained the first-fruits of the new mode of investigation, which were sufficient to startle and surprise the learned on both sides of the Alps. The mountainous configuration of the moon's surface was there first described, and the so-versity of Pisa, wrote to inform Galileo of a recent discusFalled "phosphorescence" of the dark portion of our satellite attributed to its true cause-namely, illumination by sun-light reflected from the earth. All the time-worn fables and conjectures regarding the composition of the Milky Way were at once dissipated by the simple statement that to the eye, reinforced by the telescope, it appeared as a congeries of lesser stars, while the great nebulæ were equally declared to be resolvable into similar elements. But the discovery which was at once perceived to be most important in itself, and most revolutionary in its effects, was that of Jupiter's satellites, first seen by Galileo January 7, 1610, and by him named Sidera Medicea, in honour of the grand-duke of Tuscany, Cosmo II., who had been his pupil, and was about to become his employer. An illustration is, with the general run of mankind, more powerful to convince than an argument; and the cogency of the visible plea for the Copernican theory offered by the miniature system, then for the first time disclosed to view, was recognizable in the triumph of its advocates, as well as in the increased acrimony of its opponents.

In September 1610 Galileo finally abandoned Padua for Florence. His researches with the telescope had been rewarded by the Venetian senate with the appointment for life to his professorship, at an unprecedentedly high salary. His discovery of the "Medicean Stars" was acknowledged by his nomination (July 12, 1610) as philosopher and mathematician extraordinary to the grand-duke of Tuscany. The emoluments of this office, which involved no duties save that of continuing his scientific labours, were fixed at 1000 scudi; and it was the desire of increased leisure, rather than the promptings of local patriotism, which induced him to accept an offer, the first suggestion of which had indeed come from himself. Before the close of 1610 the memorable cycle of discoveries begun in the previous year was completed by the observation of the ansated or, as it appeared to Galileo, triple form of Saturn (the ring-formation was first recognized by Huygens in 1655), of the phases of Venus, and of the spots upon the sun. Although his priority in several of these discoveries has been contested, inquiry has in each case proved favourable to his claims. In the spring of 1611 he visited Rome, and exhibited in the gardens of the

1 Leonardo da Vinci, more than a hundred years earlier, hau come to the same conclusion.

Not

sion at the grand-ducal table, in which he had been called
upon to defend the Copernican doctrine against theological
objections. This task Castelli, who was a steady friend and
disciple of the Tuscan astronomer, seems to have discharged
with moderation and success. Galileo's answer, written,
as he said himself, currente calamo, was an exposition of a
formal theory as to the relations of physical science to Holy
Writ, still further developed in an elaborate apology ad-
dressed by him in the following year (1614) to Christina
of Lorraine, dowager grand-duchess of Tuscany.
satisfied with explaining adverse texts, he met his oppon-
ents with unwise audacity on their own ground, and endea-
voured to produce scriptural confirmation of a system which
to the ignorant many seemed an incredible paradox, and to
the scientific few was a beautiful but daring innovation.
The rising agitation on the subject which, originating pro-
bably with the sincere upholders of the integrity of Scrip-
ture, was fomented for their own purposes by the rabid
Aristotelians of the schools, was heightened rather than
allayed by these manifestoes, and on the fourth Sunday of
the following Advent found a voice in the pulpit of Santa
Maria Novella. Padre Caccini's denunciation of the new
astronomy was indeed disavowed and strongly condemned
by his superiors; nevertheless, on the 5th of February
1615, another Dominican monk named Lorini laid Galileo's
letter to Castelli before the Inquisition.

Cardinal Robert Bellarmine was at that time by far the most influential member of the Sacred College. He was a man of vast learning and upright piety, but, although personally friendly to Galileo, there is no doubt that he saw in his scientific teachings a danger to religion. The year 1615 seems, however, to have beeu a period of suspense. Galileo received, as the result of a conference between Cardinals Bellarmine and Del Monte, a semi-official warning to avoid theology, and limit himself to physical reasoning. "Write freely," he was told by Monsignor Dini, "but keep outside the sacristy." Unfortunately, he had already committed himself to dangerous ground. In December he repaired personally to Rome, full of confidence that the weight of his arguments and the vivacity of his eloquence could not fail to convert the entire pontifical court to his views. He was cordially received, and eagerly listened to, but his imprudent ardour served but to injure his cause. On the 24th of February 1616 the consulting theologians of the Holy Office characterized the two propositions-that the sun

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is immovable in the centre of the world, and that the earth which he was received on his visit of congratulation to has a diurnal motion of rotation-the first as "absurd in Rome in 1624 encouraged him to hope for the realization philosophy, and formally heretical, because expressly con- of his utmost wishes. He received every mark of private trary to Holy Scripture," and the second as "open to the favour. The pope admitted him to six long audiences in same censure in philosophy, and at least erroneous as to the course of two months, wrote an enthusiastic letter to faith." Two days later Galileo was, by command of the pope the grand-duke praising the great astronomer, not only for (Paul V.), summoned to the palace of Cardinal Bellarmine, his distinguished learning, but also for his exemplary piety, and there officially admonished not thenceforward to "hold, and granted a pension to his son Vincenzo, which was afterteach, or defend" the condemned doctrine. This injunction wards transferred to himself, and paid, with some irreguhe promised to obey. On the 5th of March the Congrega- larities, to the end of his life. But on the subject of the tion of the Index issued a decree reiterating, with the decree of 1616, the revocation of which Galileo had hoped omission of the word "heretical," the censure of the theo- to obtain through his personal influence, he found him inlogians, suspending, usque corrigatur, the great work of exorable. Nevertheless, the sanguine philosopher trusted, Copernicus, De Revolutionibus orbium cœlestium, and ab- not without reason, that it would at least be interpreted in solutely prohibiting a treatise by a Carmelite monk named a liberal spirit, and his friends encouraged his imprudent Foscarini, which treated the same subject from a theological confidence by eagerly retailing to him every papal utterance point of view. At the same time it was given to be under- which it was possible to construe in a favourable sense. stood that the new theory of the solar system might be held Cardinal Hohenzollern Urban was reported to have said ex hypothesi, and the trivial verbal alterations introduced that the theory of the earth's motion had not been and into the Polish astronomer's book in 1620, when the work could not be condemned as heretical, but only as rash; and of revision was completed by Cardinal Gaetani, confirmed in 1630 the learned Dominican monk Campanella wrote to this interpretation. This edict, it is essential to observe, Galileo that the pope had expressed to him in conversation of which the responsibility rests with a disciplinary con- his disapproval of the prohibitory decree. Thus, in the full gregation in no sense representing the church, was never anticipation of added renown, and without any misgiving confirmed by the pope, and was virtually repealed in 1757 as to ulterior consequences, Galileo set himself, on his reunder Benedict XIV. turn to Florence, to complete his famous but ill-starred Galileo returned to Florence three months later, not ill-work, the Dialogo dei due Massimi Sistemi del Mondo. pleased, as his letters testify, with the result of his visit to Finished in 1630, it was not until January 1632 that it Rome. He brought with him, for the refutation of emerged from the presses of Landini at Florence. The book calumnious reports circulated by his enemies, a written was orginally intended to appear in Rome, but unexpected certificate from Cardinal Bellarmine, to the effect that no obstacles interposed. The Lyncean Academy collapsed with abjuration had been required of or penance imposed upon the death of Prince Federigo Cesi, its founder and presi him. During a prolonged audience, he had received from dent; an outbreak of plague impeded communication the pope assurances of private esteem and personal protec- between the various Italian cities; and the imprimatur tion; and he trusted to his dialectical ingenuity to find the was finally extorted, rather than accorded, under the presmeans of presenting his scientific convictions under the sure of private friendship and powerful interest. A tumult transparent veil of an hypothesis. Although a sincere of applause from every part of Europe followed its publicaCatholic, he seems to have laid but little stress on the secret tion; and it would be difficult to find in any language a admonition of the Holy Office, which his sanguine tempera- book in which animation and elegance of style are so hapmeat encouraged him gradually to dismiss from his mind. pily combined with strength and clearness of scientific exHe preserved no written memorandum of its terms, and it position. Three interlocutors, named respectively Salviati, was represented to him, according to his own deposition in Sagredo, and Simplicio, take part in the four dialogues 1633, solely by Cardinal Bellarmine's certificate, in which, of which the work is composed. The first-named exfor obvious reasons, it was glossed over rather than ex- pounds the views of the author; the second is an eager and pressly recorded. For seven years, however, during which intelligent listener; the third represents a well-meaning he led a life of studious retirement in the Villa Segni at but obtuse Peripatetic, whom the others treat at times with Bellosguardo, near Florence, he maintained an almost un- undisguised contempt. Salviati and Sagredo took their broken silence. At the end of that time he appeared in names from two of Galileo's early friends, the formera learned public with his Saggiatore, a polemical treatise written in Florentine, the latter a distinguished Venetian gentleman; reply to the Libra Astronomica of Padre Grassi (under the Simplicio ostensibly derived his from the Cilician compseudonym of Lotario Sarsi), the Jesuit astronomer of the mentator of Aristotle, but the choice was doubtless instiCollegio Romano. The subject in debate was the nature gated by a sarcastic regard to the double meaning of the of comets, the conspicuous appearance of threo of which word. There were not wanting those who insinuated that bodies in the year 1618 furnished the occasion of the Galileo intended to depict the pope himself in the guise of controversy. Galileo's views, although erroneous, since he the simpleton of the party; this chafge, however, was not held comets to be mere atmospheric emanations reflecting only preposterous in itself, but wholly unsupported by sunlight after the evanescent fashion of a halo or a rainbow, intrinsic evidence, and Urban was far too sagacious to were expressed with such triumphant vigour, and embel- give any permanent credit to it. lished with such telling sarcasms, that his opponent did not venture upon a reply. The Saggiatore was printed at Rome in October 1623, by the Academy of the Lincei, of which Galileo was a member, with a dedication to the new pope, Urban VIII, and not withstanding some passages containing a covert defence of Copernican opinions, was received with acclamation by the ecclesiastical, no less than by the scientific authorities. Everything seemed now to promise a close of unbroken prosperity to Galileo's career. Maffeo Barberini, his warmest friend and admirer in the Sacred College, was, by the election of August 8, 1623, seated on the pontifical throne; and the marked distinction with

It was at once evident that the whole tenor of this remarkable work was in flagrant contradiction with the edict passed sixteen years before its publication, as well as with the author's personal pledge of conformity to it. The ironical submission with which it opened, and the assumed indetermination with which it closed, were hardly intended to mask the vigorous assertion of Copernican principles which formed its substance. It is a singular circumstance, however, that the argument upon which Galileo mainly relied as furnishing a physical demonstration of the truth of the new theory rested on a misconception. The ebb and flow of the tides, he asserted, were a visible effect of the terres