28 LIFE, TIMES, AND SCIENTIFIC LABOURS [1639. 



memorable 22nd of June, 1633, Galileo, prosecuted by 

 the Inquisition at Rome, was compelled to abjure his 

 astronomical theories and discoveries as heretical ! The 

 inquiry with its results must have deeply interested 

 Lord Herbert ; but what could he hope to gain even from 

 his own party, as the inventor of a u semi-omnipotent 

 engine?&quot; Thus situated he was surrounded by cir 

 cumstances nowise calculated to stimulate his mental 

 activity in the peculiar occupations that employed his 

 leisure and his fortune 5 but the fact offers an invalu 

 able proof of the intense satisfaction an inquiring mind 

 always experiences in the realization of its mental 

 speculations. 



There is every reason to believe that his studies were 

 completed, his tastes fixed, his experiments pretty well 

 matured at this period, and that it was, therefore, the 

 occasion of stamping his future character. He was 

 then terminating his &quot; golden days,&quot; to enter upon a 

 very different career. While, therefore, most anxious 

 to avoid every appearance of substituting fictions for 

 facts, we feel impelled to indulge in an attempt to 

 account for his long serious devotion to employments 

 so apparently foreign to either his education, his station 

 in life, or the necessities of the times ; while, indeed, 

 on the other hand, all operated against him, owing to 

 the darkness, ignorance, persecution and prevailing pre 

 judices of the age. 



It appears from his published work that Lord Her 

 bert was better versed in mathematical than in classical 

 literature. His mental activity may have been pro 

 moted by physical causes, assuming that from delicacy 

 of constitution he may have been thereby disposed to 

 those studious habits, to which he was ever after so 

 much attached the Vandyck portrait of him in his 

 youth would indicate that he was not constituted for 



