26 SKETCHES OF CREATION, 



dominion are found in England and Franco, and Germany 

 and Palestine, and nobody questions the testimony of these 

 relics, so the antiquities of Old Ocean have been exhumed 

 from the soil of every state. Who can now perpetrate the 

 folly of denying to one empire the universality which every 

 body concedes to the other? 



So reasoned Fracastoro when, in 1517, the exhumation of 

 a multitude of curious petrifactions at Verona, in Italy, 

 had aroused the speculations of numerous writers. But his 

 reasonable suggestion was too bold for the philosophy of 

 that age, and Fracastoro was stamped a heretic by that 

 papal orthodoxy which persecuted also 



"The starry Galileo with his woes." 



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