ON INSTRUMENTS FROM ITAL Y. 115 



lowered himself so far as to inveigh against him, in low and insolent 

 language, in the Duomo of Florence, and did not blush to conclude 

 with his opinion that " mathematicians, as the authors of all heresies, 

 ought to be driven from every State." The narrow-minded monk 

 ignoring the while, that of all the heresies which he so deeply lamented, 

 not one was originated by a mathematician, while many had monks 

 for their founders. Even the Bishop of Fiesole thought it his duty 

 to allude to Galileo in his sermons. 



So that when Galileo, who, it was well known, had, when yet but a 

 student at Pisa, embraced the system of Copernicus, and both in that 

 celebrated university and afterwards at Padua, had explained it with 

 the greatest clearness, and with the addition of new arguments in its 

 support to his scholars when Galileo, I say, went to Florence, and 

 began there, beyond the reach of the dreaded protection of the Lion 

 of St. Mark, to publish the arguments which he was in the habit of 

 communicating by letter to his friends, there was let loose against him 

 a torrent of abuse and insinuations and subterfuges, for the purpose 

 of obtaining his condemnation by the Inquisition. In fact, it was 

 unavoidable necessity that compelled him to go to Rome to defend his 

 views, and attempt to persuade the most obstinate that, as a matter 

 of fact, the Bible was not opposed to the opinions of Copernicus, 

 who, indeed, more than seventy years ago, had published his works, 

 with a dedication to Paul III. Nor had there ever been any thought 

 of prohibiting them. For all that, he could count it as a great piece 

 of good fortune that he was able to return to Florence without any 

 serious inconvenience, but with the sad annoyance, however, of having 

 seen the book of Copernicus condemned by a band of ignorant and 

 fanatical monks, by a decree of the 5th of March, 1616. 



And for the moment everything seemed quiet ; the fire, however, 

 was but smouldering. In September, 1623, there succeeded to the pon- 

 tificate, tinder the name of Urban VIII., Cardinal Maffeo Barbcrini, 

 the friend of Galileo ; and the latter went to Rome to do him homage, 

 and received such honours and recompenses, that he was convinced 

 that the time was come when he should be able to publish his " Dia- 

 logues on the Great Systems," a masterpiece both of language and 

 science, in which he represents Signor Sagredo and Salviati, of Venice, 

 ks speaking in favour of the opinions of Copernicus, as well as Signor 



