CHILDHOOD OF SCIENCE. 205 



majestic God to whose power neither vastness-nor space nor time 

 present the shadow of a limit. 



But a still greater surprise awaited Galileo when he turned his 

 telescope to the fixed stars. Expecting to find them greatly en- 

 larged as all the planetary stars had been, he was startled to 

 behold them the same glistening points of light that greet our 

 eyes each cloudless night, brighter yet still of no sensible magni- 

 tude. But where to the naked eye a few only could be discerned, 

 there burst upon his lens-eyes tier upon tier of twinkling orbs, 

 countless and unending ; so deep set in the limitless void, so infi- 

 nite in distance, that no breadth of vision could in the least 

 enlarge them. Could it be possible they were also so immeasur- 

 ably remote that even the diameter of the earth's orbit formed 

 no sensible angle with them ? The Ptolemaists had been hither- 

 to unanswered in this their last argument, that the earth's axis, 

 being always unchanged in direction, should, by the new system, 

 in a revolution whose diameter was near two hundred million 

 miles, point successively to a circle of stars in the northern sky, 

 instead of pointing to that single Pole star the whole year round. 

 Yes, Galileo could now answer back that it was no longer an un- 

 certain hypothesis that the North Star was so vastly remote that 

 it would not seem to have changed its place by a hair's breadth, 

 though viewed from opposite bounds of the earth's stupendous 

 journey. 



Thus did this single-handed philosopher beat back his oppon- 

 ents step by step; and Dialogue succeeded Dialogue as new 

 truths were to be established or further errors combatted. He is 

 now an old man of seventy years. His hairs are blanched by 

 study and watchings and benefits to mankind. He is already 

 preparing for the rest of the faithful servant whose work has 

 been well done, when a summons reaches him to appear before 

 the tribunal of the Inquisition and answer to charges of heresy 

 and blasphemy. In the dark chambers of that secret court, with 

 all the insignia of intolerant power and the appliances of torture 

 before him, the old man is solemnly called upon to renounce the 

 great truth which his whole life has been consecrated to reveal 

 and maintain, " the motion through space of the earth and planets 



