GALILEO AND HIS JUDGES. 69 



magnetism had had some influence on the scientific 

 thought of the period, and that Galileo had con- 

 sidered it worthy of his attention. The writer had 

 maintained the probability of this theory, of the 

 Earth's interior being an enormous loadstone not 

 an unnatural idea in the then-existing state of 

 science and Galileo was evidently somewhat fas- 

 cinated by the hypothesis. Magnetism was attract- 

 ing the notice of the philosophers of that day, and 

 the property of the needle, which is termed the dip, 

 had been recently discovered. 



There is not much else worthy of special mention 

 in the third day's dialogue ; which in fact, as a whole, 

 is not equal to that of the second day. 



The fourth day is mainly devoted to the argument 

 drawn from the tides. It was in handling this branch 

 of the subject that Galileo's great sagacity and power 

 of discernment seem to have deserted him. It is a 

 curious thing that the inhabitant of a Mediterranean 

 country, who, for all that one knows, never saw a 

 really great tide in his life, should have seized upon 

 this topic, and so utterly misused and perverted it. 



If, instead of living in Italy, he had resided at an 

 English seaport, he would probably have never fallen 

 into the mistakes he thus made. In the Mediterranean 

 there are currents, arising from other causes, which he, 

 however, attributed to tidal action ; but for the most 

 part there is little, if any, appreciable ebb and flow of 

 the tides, scarcely any perceptible rise and fall of the 

 sea, a fact which he particularly notices. But in some 



