30 HISTORY OF ASTRONOMICAL DISCOVERY. 



stars, but would not take the instrument in hand to look for themselves. " Oh, my 

 beloved Keppler," wrote Galileo, "how I wish that we could have one long laugh 

 together!" 



In anagrams, the letters of which, when transposed, make the following sentences, he 

 conveyed the result of the telescopic observation of Saturn and Venus : 



Altissimum Planetam tergeminum observari. 

 The most distant planet I have observed to be threefold. 

 Cynthiae figuras aemulatur mater amorum. 

 Venus rivals the moon's phases. 



The practice was not then obsolete of publishing discoveries in philosophy in an ana- 

 gram, which could only be deciphered by the author, or by the party to whom he had 

 conveyed the key. This was a relic, now happily extinct, of that pride of science 

 prevalent in remote antiquity which disdained the communication of knowledge to the 

 mass. The peculiar structure of Saturn, the subject of the first anagram, was only 

 imperfectly discernible by the telescope of Galileo. The discovery of the phases of Venus, 

 the subject of the second, was an important observation. It had been argued that, if the 

 planet revolved round the sun, she ought to exhibit phases like the moon, whereas she 

 always appears to the naked eye in full-orbed brightness. The argument was just and 

 formidable; and Copernicus could only reply to it, as tradition reports, that some 

 time or other this resemblance to the moon would be found out. The prediction was 

 verified seventy years after his death ; and, by the telescope discovering Venus exhibit- 

 ing the various phases of the waxing and the waning moon, the apparent objection 

 to his system was converted into a confirmation of it by it being established beyond 

 a doubt that the planet revolved round the sun. Another fact which the application of 

 the telescope brought to light, illustrating the truth of the Copernican system, was the 

 solar spots, their incessant motion, and the consequent rotation of the great luminary. 

 The metaphysics of the schoolmen had taught the quiescence of the earth on account of 

 its ponderous mass, but the position was destroyed at once by the sun, a far mightier 

 body, being discovered to have a revolution upon his axis. Galileo was equally as 

 successful in overthrowing the mechanical objections advanced against the doctrine of 

 the earth's rotation, which supposed that the ground would pass away from beneath 

 stones in the air and birds upon the wing. He showed that the atmosphere of the globe, 

 and all bodies in it, will participate in the common motion of rotation, and illustrated his 

 argument by referring to the clear case of a stone falling from the mast of a vessel 

 participating in the motion of the ship. 



Galileo undoubtedly contributed more than any man of his age to weaken the hold 

 which the natural philosophy of Aristotle had long had of the human mind, and establish 

 a conviction in favour of the physical constitution of the universe as now demonstrated, 

 though in early life he regarded the Copernican theory as a " solemn folly." But just in 

 proportion to his success he became an object of malevolence to those whose pride would 

 not submit to abandon opinions once embraced, however false, or whose ignorance could 

 not appreciate the evidence of their falsity. The career of the Tuscan artist, as Milton 

 calls him, turning to the moon his optic glass, 



At evening from the top of Fesole, 

 Or in Valdarno, to descry new lands, 

 Rivers, or mountains, in her spotty globe, 



was a splendid one, but its close was overcast with clouds and shadows. The authorities 

 of the papal church were roused to treat his scientific demonstrations as heretical to 

 visit the illustrious observer with kn ecclesiastical process on account of his opinions 

 and he had the mental and moral weakness to abjure what he knew to be true. Who 



