The beauty and grace of Galileo's speech and presence 

 quite put the abstract Ricci in the shadow. The right 

 man can make anything interesting, just as Dean Swift 

 could write an entrancing essay with the broomstick 

 as a central theme. The man's the thing, Hamlet to 

 the contrary, notwithstanding. 



Galileo knew the Florentine heart and so he gave lec- 

 tures on a Florentine one Dante, who loved a girl 

 named Beatrice. The young Pisan drew diagrams of 

 Dante's Inferno and surely it was nobody else's. He 

 gave its size, height, weight, and told how to reach it. 

 He gave lectures on the Hydrostatic Balance and the 

 Centers of Gravity, and published them as serials. The 

 Florentines crowned him with bay and proclaimed 

 him ''The Modern Archimedes." 



-V. 



US A now put forth efforts to have her gifted 

 son come home. There was always rivalry 

 between Pisa and Florence. Pisa could 

 not afford to supply Florence her men of 

 genius, let her depend upon home pro- 

 duction, or go without. 

 Galileo became Professor of Mathematics in the Uni- 

 versity of Pisa, a life position, or at least one he could 

 hold during good behavior. 



One of the time-honored dictums of the day was that 

 falling bodies fell with a velocity proportioned to their 

 weight. The question was first thrashed out in the 

 class-room ; and after Galileo had somewhat slyly got- 



43 



LITTLE 

 JOURNEYS 



