GALILEO. 



was brought up to receive sentence in 

 full congregation ; when he was ordered, 

 in the most solemn manner, to abjure 

 and condemn the Copernican system, as 

 contrary to the Scriptures, and to bind 

 himself, by oath, no longer to teach or 

 support it, either directly or indirectly. 

 As a punishment for having disobeyed 

 the former decree of the court, he was 

 condemned to be detained in the prisons 

 of the Holy office, during the pleasure 

 of the Cardinal Inquisitors, and enjoined, 

 as a saving penance, for three years to 

 come, to repeat, once a week, the seven 

 penitential psalms, the court reserving to 

 themselves the power of moderating, 

 changing, and taking away altogether, or 

 in part, the above-mentioned punishment 

 and penance His dialogues were also 

 censured, prohibited, and ordered to be 

 burnt at Rome. 



Pope Urban VIII. who at that time sat 

 on the Pontifical throne, lessened the ri- 

 gour of his sentence, by confining him 

 for a time to the palace and garden de 

 Medici at Rome ; after which he was 

 sent to the archi-episcopal palace at Si- 

 enna, where the air was more favourable 

 to his state of health ; and in the course 

 of the year 1634, he was permitted to 

 reside at his country house at Ancetri, in 

 the vicinity of Florence. 



In this place he spent the remainder of 

 bis days, visited and esteemed by the 

 most distinguished characters in Florence, 

 and diligently applying himself to his ce- 

 lestial observations. By his continual 

 use of the telescope, however, and the 

 injuries which his eyes received from 

 the nocturnal air, his sight was gradually 

 impaired, till he became entirely blind 

 about three years before his death. This 

 calamity he bore with a truly philosophi- 

 cal resignation, employing himself in con- 

 stant meditation and enquiry, the result 

 of which he intended to communicate to 

 the world. He had digested much mat- 

 ter, and had begun to dictate his concep- 

 tions, when he was attacked by a distem- 

 per which terminated in his death, in 

 1642, when he was in the seventy-eighth 

 year of his age. 



Galileo was small in stature, but of a 

 venerable aspect, and of a vigorous con- 

 stitution. His learning was very exten- 

 sive ; and he possessed, in a high degree, 

 a clearness and acuteness of wit. In com- 

 pany he was free and affable, and full of 



He took great delight in Architecture 

 and Painting, and designed extremely 

 well; and he also placed on, the lute 



with great skill and taste. Whenever 

 he spent any of his time in the country, 

 he took great pleasure in husbandry. 

 From the time of Archimedes,, as M. 

 Leibni.z observes, there had been no- 

 thing done in mechanical geometry, till 

 Galileo, who, possessing an excellent 

 judgment, and great skill in the most 

 abstruse points of geometry, first extend- 

 ed the boundaries of that science, and 

 began to reduce the resistance of solid 

 bodies to its laws. We shall follow the 

 example of Dr. Hutton, in giving a sum- 

 mary sketch of his discoveries and im- 

 provements, chiefly in the language of 

 the judicious Colin Maclaurin. * He 

 made the evidence of the Copernican 

 system more sensible, when he showed 

 from the phases of Venus, like to the 

 monthly phases of the moon, that Venus 

 actually revolves about the sun. He 

 proved the revolution of the sun on his 

 axis, from his spots ; and thence the di- 

 urnal rotation of the earth became more 

 credible. The four satellites that at- 

 tended Jupiter, in his revolution about 

 the sun, represented, in Jupiter's lesser 

 system, a just image of the great solar 

 system, and rendered it more easy to 

 conceive how the moon might attend the 

 earth, as a satellite, in her annual revolu- 

 tion. By discovering hills and cavities 

 in the moon, and spots in the sun con- 

 stantly varying, he showed that there was 

 not so great a difference between celes- 

 tial and sublunary bodies as the philoso- 

 phers had vainly imagined. 



" He rendered no less service to sci- 

 ence, by treating, in a clear and geome- 

 trical manner, the doctrine of motion, 

 which has been justly called the key of 

 nature. The rational part of mechanics 

 had been so much neglected, that scarce- 

 ly any improvement was made in it for al- 

 most 2000 years ; but Galileo has given 

 as fully the theory of equable motions, 

 and of such as are uniformly accelerated 

 or retarded, and of these two compound- 

 ed together. He first demoustrated, that 

 the spaces described by heavy bodies, 

 from the beginning of their descent, are 

 as the squares of the times ; and that a 

 body, projected in any direction that is 

 not perpendicular to the horizon, de- 

 scribes a parabola. These were the be- 

 ginnings of the doctrine of the motion of 

 heavy bodies, which has been since car- 

 ried to so great a height by Sir Isaac 

 Newton. In geometry, he invented the 

 cycloid, or trochoid, though the proper- 

 ties of it were afterwards chiefly demon- 

 strated by his pupil Torricelli. He iff* 



