190 Jotice of the Italian Scientific Association. 
two British subjects entered their names, among whom were R, Brown 
and Mr Babbage. I arrived here on the 14th September, the day before 
the Congress assembled, and on enrolling my name received a card, on 
the presentation of which all the public institutions of Florence were open 
to the members, with a small book and map of the city, prepared and 
printed expressly for the occasion. On the 15th, the first meeting was 
preceded by a mass in music, performed in the church of Santa Croce, 
the Florentine Pantheon, where all tlie savans and most of the aristocracy 
of Florence were present ; the effect was very grand in the midst of the 
tombs of Machiavelli, Michel Angelo, and Galileo, and surrounded by 
the chefs d’wuvre of Giotto, Gaddi, and the other founders of the Flo- 
rentine school of painting. From the church we adjourned to the great 
hall of the Palazzo Vecchio, constructed for the purpose of assembling the 
Florentine citizens during the Republic, and which, for nearly three cen- 
turies, had never witnessed so numerous an auditory. There, in the pre- 
sence of the Grand Duke and his family, the President, the Marquis Ri- 
dolfi, opened the business of the Congress by a very good speech, which 
elicited general and well-merited applause. This done, the members re- 
paired to another building, the Museum of Natural History, to be pre- 
sent at the inauguration of the statue of Galileo, and to divide themselves 
into sections and name their officers. I must first of all say a few words 
respecting the Tribune of Galileo, The present Grand Duke of Tus- 
cany, Leopold IL., is one of the sovereigns of the present day who has 
done most, compared with his means, to encourage the arts and sciences 
in his state. Among other things, he has collected, at a very great ex- 
pense, not only every MS. of Galileo he could procure, but also those 
of his pupils, who formed the celebrated and too short-lived Academia 
del Cimento, as well as the instruments used by Galileo and his fol- 
lowers, and by means of which they founded the modern school of 
experimental philosophy. Having done this much, Leopold II. deter- 
mined to raise a monument to his immortal countryman, and to inau- 
gurate it on the occasion of the Italian Association for the advance- 
ment of science assembling at Florence ; and to place in a tribune, de- 
dicated to Galileo, every thing that had been collected relating to him. 
The Museum of Natural History, which contains also the observatory 
and the cabinet of philosophical instruments, and which adjoins the grand 
dueal palace, was selected as the site of this temple to the cause of science 
in the person of its greatest founder. It forms a beautiful tribune, with 
a magnificent statue of Galileo in the centre, surrounded by niches, in 
which are placed busts of his pupils, and with presses containing the in- 
struments with which he made his greatest discoveries. The walls are 
inlaid with marble and jasper, a kind of work for which the Florentine 
artists are so eclebrated, and the ceiling painted by the first artists of the 
day, representing different events in the life of the Tuscan philosopher. 
Every thing that art and taste could effect to render the edifice worthy 
of its object has been done, and the result has been admirable. What 
