54 HISTORY OF MECHANICS. 



in his situation at the court of Florence on his 

 death, which took place a few months afterwards. 

 Viviani formed one of his family during the three 

 last years of his life, and surviving him and his con- 

 temporaries, (for Viviani lived even into the eight- 

 eenth century,) has a manifest pleasure and pride 

 in calling himself the last of the disciples of Galileo. 

 Gassendi, an eminent French mathematician and 

 professor, visited him in 1628 ; and it shows us the 

 extent of his reputation when we find Milton refer- 

 ring thus to his travels in Italy 1 : "There it was 

 that I found and visited the famous Galileo, grown 

 old, a prisoner in the Inquisition, for thinking in 

 astronomy otherwise than the Franciscan and Do- 

 minican licensers thought." 



Besides the above writers, we may mention, as 

 persons who pursued and illustrated Galileo's doc- 

 trines, Borelli, who was professor at Florence and 

 Pisa; Mersenne, the correspondent of Descartes, 

 Avho was professor at Paris; Wallis, who was ap- 

 pointed Savilian professor at Oxford in 1649, his 

 predecessor being ejected by the parliamentary 

 commissioners. It is not necessary for us to trace 

 the progress of purely mathematical inventions, 

 which constitute a great part of the works of 

 these authors; but a few circumstances may be 

 mentioned. 



The question of the proof of the Second Law of 

 Motion was, from the first, identified with the con- 



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