hen Newton was only twenty-seven years old he was elected the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Trinity, an office that carried with it a goodly salary and also very much honor. Never before had so young a man held this chair.

Newton was a pioneer in announcing the physical properties of light.

Every village photographer now fully understands this, but when Newton first proclaimed it he created a whirlwind of disapproval.

When a man at that time put forth an unusual thought, it was regarded as a challenge. Teachers and professors all over Great Britain, and also in Germany and France, at once set about to show the fallacy of Newton's conclusions.

Newton had issued a pamphlet with diagrams showing how to study light, and the apparatus was so simple and cheap that the "Newton experiments" were tried everywhere in schoolrooms.

People always combat a new idea when first presented, and so Newton found himself overwhelmed with correspondence.

Cheap arguments were fired into Cambridge in volleys. These were backed up by quibbling men—Pro Bono Publico, Veritas and Old Subscriber—men incapable of following Newton's scientific mind. In his great good-nature and patience Newton replied to his opponents at length.

His explanations were construed into proof that he was not sure of his ground. One man challenged him to debate the matter publicly, and we hear of his going up to London, king that he was, to argue with a commoner.

Such terms as "falsifier," "upstart," "pretender," were freely used, and poor Newton for a time was almost in despair.

He had thought that the world was anxious for truth! Some of his fellow-professors now touched their foreheads and shook their heads ominously as he passed. He had gone so far beyond them that the cries of "whoa!" were unnoticed.

It is here worth noting that the universal fame of Sir Isaac Newton was brought about by his rancorous enemies, and not by his loving friends. Gentle, honest, simple and direct as was his nature, he experienced notoriety before he knew fame.

To the world at large he was a "wizard" and a "juggler" before he was acknowledged a teacher of truth—a man of science.

When the dust of conflict concerning Newton's announcement of the qualities of light had somewhat subsided, he turned to his former discovery, the Law of Gravitation, and bent his mighty mind upon it. The influence of the moon upon the Earth, the tilt of the Earth, the flattening of the poles, the recurring tides, the size, weight and distance of the planets, now occupied Newton's attention. And to study these phenomena properly, he had to construct special and peculiar apparatus.

In Sixteen Hundred Eighty-seven the results of his discoveries were brought together in one great book, the "Principia." Newton was forty-five years old then.

He was still the Cambridge professor, but was well known in political circles in London on account of having been sent there at various times to represent the University in a legal way.

His diplomatic success led to his being elected a member of Parliament. Among other great men whom he met in London was Samuel Pepys, who kept a diary and therein recorded various important nothings about "Mr. Isaac Newton of Cambridge—a schoolteacher of degree, with a great dignity of manner and pleasing Countenance." It seems Newton thought so well of Pepys that he wrote him several letters, from which Samuel gives us quotations. Pepys really claimed the honor of introducing Newton into good society.

Among others with whom Newton made friends in Parliament was Mr. Montague, who shortly afterward became Secretary of the Exchequer. Montague made his friend Newton a Warden of the Mint, with pay about double that which he had received while at Cambridge.

In this public work Newton brought such talent and diligence to bear that in Sixteen Hundred Ninety-seven he was made Master of the Mint, at a salary of fifteen hundred pounds a year—a princely sum in those days.

There is no doubt that the fact that Newton was a devout Churchman and an upholder of the Established Order was a great, although perhaps unconscious, diplomatic move.

His delightful personality—gracious, suave, dignified and silent—won for him admiration wherever he would go. In argument his fine reserve and excellent temper were most convincing. Had he turned his attention to the law he would have become Chief Justice of England.

In Seventeen Hundred Three he was elected President of the Royal Society, an office he held continuously for twenty-five years, and which tenure was only terminated by his death.

In Seventeen Hundred Five the Queen visited Cambridge, and there with much pageantry bestowed the honor of Knighthood which changed Professor Newton into Sir Isaac Newton.

But the man himself was still the simple, modest gentleman. The title did not spoil him—he was a noble man from boyhood.

His duties as Master of the Mint did not interfere with his studies and scientific investigations. He revised and rewrote his "Principia," and in Seventeen Hundred Thirteen the new edition was issued. One copy was most sumptuously bound, and Sir Isaac, who was a special favorite at Court, presented it in person to the Queen. Those who are interested in such things may, by applying to the Curator of the British Museum, see and turn the leaves of this book, reading the gracious inscription of the author, while a solemn man in brass buttons stands behind.

Newton died March Twentieth, Seventeen Hundred Twenty-seven, at the age of eighty-five, and was buried in Westminster Abbey.

The verdict of humanity concerning Sir Isaac Newton has been summed up for us thus by Laplace: "His work was pre-eminent above all other products of the human intellect."

GALILEO

GALILEO

ith the history of Galileo and Copernicus, there is connected a man of such stern and withal striking individuality that the story of the rise and evolution of astronomy can not be told and this man's name left out. Giordano Bruno was born in Fifteen Hundred Forty-eight. His parents were obscure people, and his childhood and early education are enveloped in mystery. Occasional passages in his writings refer to his sympathy for outcast children, and he quotes the saying of Jesus, "Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not, for of such is the Kingdom of Heaven." He then refers to himself as having been a waif and robbed of the love that was his due, "the lawful, legal heritage of every child, sent without its consent into a world of struggle and strife, where only love makes existence possible."

Evidently, the early life of Bruno was a symbol and shadow of what Fate held in store for him.

The first authentic knowledge we have of Bruno was when he was twenty-two years old. He was then a Dominican monk, and he is brought to our attention because he distinguished himself by incurring the displeasure of his superiors. His particular offense was that he had declared, "The infallibility of the Pope is only in matters spiritual, and does not apply to the science of material things."

Strangely enough, these words of Bruno are almost identical with words recently expressed by Cardinal Satolli.

The difference in their reception is owing to a mere matter of a few hundred years. Truth is a question of time and place. Bruno was banished for his temerity, and Satolli wears the red hat. Verily, yesterday's heresy is today's orthodoxy.

he attitude of the Church toward the teachings of Copernicus, after the death of the man, was one of patronizing pity.

Instead of putting his great book, "Revolutions of the Heavenly Bodies," on the "Index," the wiser plan was adopted of paying no attention to it. Occasionally, however, the subject was broached by some incautious novitiate, and then the custom was to treat the Copernican Theory as a mere hypothesis, and its author as a mental defective.

Bruno would not have it so. To him it was a very important matter whether the sun revolved around the earth as the priests taught, or the earth revolved around the sun as set forth in the work of Copernicus. He came to the conclusion that Copernicus was right, and said so.

It was ordered that he should cease lecturing on the subject of astronomy and apply himself to spiritual matters. He argued that he should be allowed to think and speak what he pleased about the stars, since the whole matter was one of opinion, and even the Pope did not know, positively, the final facts of astronomy, and if the Copernican Theory was a hypothesis, so also was the Ptolemaic Theory held by the Church.

It will be seen that Copernicus and Bruno were very different in temperament: one was gentle, diplomatic, cautious; the other was headstrong, firm and full of argument.

Bruno was given his choice: to cease the study of astronomy or to lay aside the Dominican frock. The hardihood of the young man was seen in that he unfrocked himself, thinking that once outside of the order he was not responsible to a superior and could teach what he pleased, so long as it was not "heresy."

Heresy is treason to the Church, but Bruno could not see how spiritual dogma could cover the facts of Physical Science, since new facts were constantly being discovered, and the material universe could only be understood by being studied. He was too innocent to comprehend that a vast majority of the people believed that popes, cardinals and priests knew everything, and that when any branch of knowledge was questioned it placed the priests in doubt. Certainly the Church has not opposed Science—she has only opposed heresy. But the curious fact is that advancing Science has usually been to the Church heretical. When Bruno opposed anything that the priests taught, he opposed the Church. He was warned to leave Rome—his life was in danger. He fled to Geneva, the home of Calvin.

Here he thought, surely, he could speak and write as he chose. But alas! Protestantism cared even less about Science than did the monks, and "heresy" to John Calvin was quite as serious a matter as it was to Calvin's competitor, the Pope of Rome.

The Protestants of Geneva gave Bruno scant attention; they had never heard of Copernicus, and the movements of the stars were as nothing to them, since the world was soon to come to an end.

The learned men were even then making mathematical calculations, based on the prophecies of the Old Testament, as to how soon the general destruction would take place.

Bruno sought to argue them out of their childishness, with the result that he got himself marked as an infidel and a dangerous man.

From Geneva he went to Lyons, then to Paris, where his personality made itself felt, and he was given a hearing at the University. Here he remained for several years, when he went to England, arriving there in Fifteen Hundred Eighty-four, the same year that a rustic by the name of William Shakespeare, from Stratford, reached London. Whether they ever met is doubtful.

Bruno spoke five languages, and his polite accomplishments afforded him an immediate entry into the best circles of society. He was entertained at the home of Sir Philip Sidney, and afterward carried on an extensive correspondence with this prince of gentlemen. Greville presented Bruno to Queen Elizabeth, who invited him to lecture at the Court on his favorite theme.

This he did, and it is quite probable that the noble lords and ladies left "calls" so they could be awakened when the lecture was over and congratulate the speaker of the evening on his effort.

At Oxford there were disputations where Bruno's faultless Latin impressed the pedants much more than did his argument, so they offered him a position as Professor of Languages, but this he smilingly declined, excusing himself on the grounds that he had important business on the Continent: and he had. Already they were collecting fagots for his benefit.

He returned to Paris and began his lecturing on Science. His arguments had convinced one person at least, and that was himself, that as the Church knew nothing of Physical Science, why, possibly it stood in a like position regarding spiritual truth. That is to say, the so-called "sacred truths" were mere assumptions piled up to satisfy the people, and the ignorance and superstition of the many marked high water for the teaching of the priests. The business of the Church was to satisfy the people, and not enlighten them, for if the people became enlightened enough they would see that they did not need the Church, and then where were the honors and the riches and the red hats!

Bruno cleared his mind of its cobwebs by expression, just as we all do—that is what expression is for.

The people really dictate to the priests what they shall teach; moreover, the people absolutely refuse to listen to anything in which they do not believe, and decline to pay for preaching that is not done to their own dictation. The business, then, of the Church is to study carefully the ignorance of the people and conform to it. On this one thing does its stability depend. Therefore it must, as a matter of self-preservation, suppress any chance intellect that is ahead of its time, lest this man honeycomb the whole structure of churchly dogma.

Bruno said that, just as the world seemed to stand still and the stars move around us, so did the Church seem to most people a fixed fact. But exactly the opposite was true; the Church moves as the people move, and unless men outside of the Church educate the people, or the people educate themselves, they will forever remain in darkness.

Bruno offered to debate the question publicly with the Bishop of Paris. That worthy was no match for Bruno in point of oratory, but when we can not answer a man's reasons, all is not lost, for we can at least call him vile names, and this is often quite as effectual as logic.

The Bishop launched a fusillade of theological lyddite at Bruno, declaring that any Churchman who would so much as hold converse with such a wretch was disgraced forever, and that the propositions Bruno wished to argue were unthinkable to a self-respecting man. He declared that it was only the mercy of God that kept the lightning from striking Bruno dead as he wrote his heresies.

Matters were getting strained, and the authorities, fearing insurrection, acted upon the advice of the good Bishop and expelled Bruno from France. He went to Wittenberg, in his innocence, intending to tack on the church-door there his theses. But Wittenberg had no use for Bruno—he believed too much, or too little, Luther could not tell which.

The University of Zurich now offered to let the exile come there and teach what he wished. Thither he journeyed and there his restless mind seemed for the first time to find a home. His writings were slowly making head, and around him there clustered a goodly group of students who believed in him and loved him.

In the midst of this oasis in a troubled life, word came from some of the old-time friends he had known in Rome. They were now in Venice, and wished to have him come there and lecture. Bruno thought that his little leaven was leavening the whole lump—he was not without ambition—he was flattered by the invitation. He accepted it and went to Venice.

It was simply a ruse to get the man within striking distance. Very soon after his arrival in Venice he was arrested by agents of the Inquisition and secretly taken to Rome. He was lodged in a dungeon of the Castle Saint Angelo. Just what his experience was there we can not say—the horrors of it all are not ours, for no friend of Bruno's was allowed to approach, and what he there wrote was destroyed.

We do know, however, that he was asked to recant, and we know he refused. We also know that he repeated his heresies and hurled back into the teeth of his accusers the invective they heaped upon him.

Bribery, persuasion, threat and torture were tried in turn, but all in vain, for Bruno would not swerve. Unlike Savonarola his quivering flesh could not wring from his heart an apology.

He scorned the rack and thumbscrew, declaring they could not reach his soul. He knew that death would be the end; he prayed for it, and even thought to hasten it by an aggravating manner and harshness of speech toward his captors, seemingly quite unnecessary.

For seven long years he was in prison. He was burned alive on the Seventh of February, Sixteen Hundred, aged fifty-two.

When bound to the stake he turned his face from the crucifix that was held before him, and sought to kiss the fagots. His ashes were thrown to the four winds. Thus perished Bruno.

n the year Fifteen Hundred Sixty-four, Galileo Galilei was born; consequently, he was thirty-six years old when Bruno was executed. He had known Bruno, had attended many of his lectures, and had followed his career with interest; and while he agreed with him concerning the Copernican theory of the earth's revolution, he took exceptions to Bruno's arbitrary ways of presenting the matter, and also to his scathing criticisms of theology. At this time Galileo could not see that the extravagant words of Bruno were largely forced from him by the violence of the opposition he had encountered. Galileo fully believed that Bruno had been put to death for treason to the Church, and not on account of his astronomical teachings.

These men had come up from totally different stations in life. Bruno was a man of the people—a self-made man—who bore upon his person the marks of the hammer. Galileo was of noble blood, and traced an ancestry to a Gonfalonier of Florence. From early infancy he had enjoyed association with polite persons, and had sat on the knees of greatness.

When eighteen he was graduated from the University of Pisa; and at that early age his family and friends were comparing him, not without reason, to a Genius who had come out of Tuscany some years before, Leonardo da Vinci.

Parents either exaggerate the talents of their children or else belittle them. The woman who bore George Gordon called him "that lame brat"; but we call him "The Poet Byron."

Benjamin Franklin ran away from home, and his family thought themselves disgraced by his printed utterances. George Washington's mother, after being told that her son had been made Commander-in-Chief, laughed knowingly and said, "They don't know him as well as I do!" Voltaire's father posted his son as irresponsible, tied up a legacy so "the scapegrace could not waste it," invested good money in daily prayers to be said for the scapegrace's salvation, and then died of a broken heart, just as play-actors do on the stage, only this man died sure enough. Alfred Tennyson at thirteen wrote a poem addressed to his grandfather; the old gentleman gave him a guinea for it, and then wrote these words: "This is the first and last penny you will ever receive for writing poetry." The father of Shelley misquoted Job, and said, "Oh, to be brought down to the grave in grief through the follies of an ungrateful child!" And Labouchere says that one of the four brothers of Shakespeare used to explain that he wasn't the play-actor who wrote "Hamlet" and "Othello," lest, mayhap, his name should be smirched.

Galileo's mother had that beautiful dream which I believe all good mothers have: that her son might be the savior of the world. As he grew to manhood, her faith in him did not relax.

In childhood Galileo showed great skill in invention. He made curious toys with cogs and wheels and eccentrics; whittled out violins, and transformed simple reeds into lutes, upon which he played music of his own composition. In fact, so great was his skill in music that at twenty they wished to make him official organist and choirmaster of the Cathedral. His personal taste, however, ran more to painting; for some months he worked at his canvases with an ardor too great to last long. If ever a man was touched by the Spirit of the Renaissance, it was surely young Galileo. The Archbishop of Pisa said, "Upon him has fallen the mantle of Michelangelo."

He gave lectures on Art, and taught Painting by actual example. One of his pupils, and a great artist, Lodovico Cigoli, always maintained that it was to the inspiration and counsel of Galileo that he owed his success.

There are really only two things to see at Pisa: one is the Leaning Tower, from which Galileo with his line and plummet made some of his most interesting experiments; and the other is the Cathedral where the visitor beholds the great bronze lamp that is suspended from the vaulted ceiling. When he was about twenty-one, sitting in the silence of this church (which the passing years have only made more beautiful), he noticed that there was a slight swinging motion to this lamp—it was never still. Galileo set to work timing and measuring these oscillations, and he found that they were always done in exact measure and in perfect rhythm. This led, some years later, to perfecting an astronomical clock for measuring movements of the stars. And from this was originated the pendulum-clock, where before we had depended on sundials.

The endeavor of Galileo's parents had been to keep him ignorant of mathematics and practical life, that he might blossom forth as a saint who would sing and play and make pictures like those of Leonardo, and carve statues like Michelangelo, only better.

But parents plan, and Fate disposes.

In Fifteen Hundred Eighty-three, Ostilio Ricci, the famous mathematician, chanced to be in Pisa, on his way from Rome to Milan, and gave a lecture at the Court, on Geometry.

Galileo was not interested in the theme, but he was in the speaker, and so he attended the lecture.

This action proved one of the pivotal points in his life.

"Whether other people really teach us anything, is a question," says Stanley Hall; "but they do sometimes give us impulses, and make us find out for ourselves."

Ricci made Galileo find out for himself.

He turned to Archimedes from Plato. Geometry became a passion, and a very wise man has told us that we never accomplish anything, either good or bad, without passion. Passion means one hundred pounds of steam on the boiler, with love sitting on the safety-valve, when the blow-off is set for fifty.

It surely is risky business, I will admit; accidents will occur occasionally and explosions sometimes happen, but everything is risky, even life, since few get out of it alive.

And so, to drop back to the original proposition, nothing great and sublime is ever done without passion.

Galileo had his mechanical whooping-cough, musical mumps, artistic measles, and now the hectic flush of mathematics burned on his cheeks. He talked and dreamed mathematics.

Euclid was in the saddle.

Ricci became interested in the talented young scholar and remained longer at Pisa than he had intended, that they might sit up all night and surprise the rising sun, discussing beauties of dimensions and the wonders of dynamics.

Together they went to Florence, where Ricci introduced his pupil as a pedagogic sample of the goods, just as Booker Washington usually takes with him on his travels a few ebony homo bricks as his specimens from Tuskegee.

The beauty and the grace of Galileo's speech and presence put the abstract Ricci in the shadow. The right man can make anything interesting, just as Dean Swift could write an entrancing essay with the broomstick as a central theme. The man's the thing, Hamlet to the contrary, notwithstanding.

Galileo knew the Florentine heart, and so he gave lectures on a Florentine: one Dante, who loved a girl named Beatrice.

The young Pisan drew diagrams of Dante's Inferno—and surely it was nobody's else. He gave its size, height, weight, and told how to reach it.

He gave lectures on the Hydrostatic Balance and the Centers of Gravity, and then published them as serials.

The Florentines crowned him with bay and enthusiastically proclaimed him, "The Modern Archimedes."

isa now put forth efforts to have her gifted son come home. There was always rivalry between Pisa and Florence. Pisa could not afford to supply Florence her men of genius—let her depend upon production from home, or go without.

Galileo became Professor of Mathematics at the University of Pisa, a life position, or at least one he could hold during good behavior.

One of the time-honored dictums of the day was that falling bodies fell with a velocity proportioned to their weight. The question was first thrashed out in the classroom; and after Galileo had slyly gotten all of these scientific wiseacres to commit themselves, he invited them, with their students, to the Leaning Tower.

Then he proved by ocular demonstrations that they were positively wrong.

It is very beautiful to teach Truth, but error should not be corrected with too much eclat. If the love of Truth, alone, was the guiding impulse of Galileo, he might have secretly explained his theory to one of the wiseacres, and this wiseacre could have casually demonstrated it, so all the rest could have said, "That is what we always knew and taught."

Instead of this, Galileo compelled the entire faculty to back water and dine on fricasseed crow.

They got even by calling him "a scientific bastardino," and at his next lecture he was roundly hissed. Soon after he was bluntly informed that his office was to teach the young, and not to undo the old.

And that is the way the troubles of Galileo began.

He might then have apologized, and slipped back into peace and obscurity and later been tucked in by kind oblivion. But he had tasted blood, and the rabies of setting straight the scientific world, for its own good, was upon him.

That he was wrong in the correction of his elders, he would not for a moment admit; and he was even guilty of saying, "Antiquity can not sanctify that which is wrong in reason and false in principle." Soon after he committed another forepaugh by showing that a wonderful boat invented by Giovanni de Medici for the purpose of fighting hostile ships, would not work, since there were no men on board to guide it, and its automatic steering apparatus would as likely run its nose into land, as into the hull of the enemy.

He also decorated his argument with a few subtle touches as to the beauty of fighting battles without going to war and risking life and limb.

Men who are not kind to the faults of royalty can hope for small favor in a monarchy, though the monarchy be a republic. Galileo was cut off the Standard Oil payroll, and forced to apply to a teachers' agency, that he might find employment.

He did not wait long; the rival University of Padua tendered him a position on a silver platter; and the Paduans made much dole about how unfortunate it was that men could not teach Truth in Italy, save at Padua—alas! The Governing Board of Padua made a great stroke in securing Galileo, and Pisa fell back on her Leaning Tower as her chief attraction.

From a position of mediocrity, the University of Padua gradually rose to one of worldwide celebrity. Galileo remained at Padua from Fifteen Hundred Ninety-two to Sixteen Hundred Ten, which years are famous not alone through the wonderful inventions of Galileo, but because in that same interval of time, at least thirty of Shakespeare's thirty-seven plays were written. Surely, God was smiling on the planet Earth!

Galileo's salary was raised every year, starting at two hundred florins, until it reached over one thousand florins, not to mention the numerous gifts from grateful pupils, old and young. Students came to Padua from all over the world to hear Galileo's lectures.

Starting with only a common classroom, the audience increased so fast that a special auditorium was required that would seat two thousand persons. It was during this time that Galileo invented the proportional compasses, an instrument now in use everywhere, without the slightest change having been made in it.

He also invented the thermometer; but greatest, best and most wonderful of all, he produced an instrument through which he could view the stars, and see them much magnified. With this instrument, he saw heavenly bodies that had never been seen before; he beheld that Jupiter had satellites which moved in orbits, and that Venus revolved, showing different sides at different times, thus proving that which Copernicus declared was true, but which, for lack of apparatus, he could not prove.

Galileo Galilei was getting to be more than a professor of mathematics—he was becoming a power in the world.

The lever of his mighty mind was indeed finding a fulcrum.

he year Sixteen Hundred Nine is forever fixed in history, through the fact that in that year Galileo invented the telescope.

Every good thing is an evolution. "Specilla," or helps to read, had been made, and sold privately and mysteriously, as early as the year Fourteen Hundred. These first magnifying-glasses were associated with magic, or wonder-working; the words "magnify" and "magic" having a common source and a similar meaning. Magicians wore big square glasses, and by their aid, some of them claimed to see things at a great distance; and also to perceive things stolen, hidden or lost. Occasionally, the magician would persuade his customer to try on the glasses, and then even common men could see for themselves that there was something in the scheme—goodness me! The use of spectacles was at first confined entirely to these wonder-workers—or men who magnified things forever. During the Fifteenth Century, public readers and occasionally priests wore spectacles. To read was a miracle to most people, and a book was a mysterious and sacred thing—or else a diabolical thing. The populace would watch the man put on his "specillum," and the idea was everywhere abroad that the magic glasses gave an ability to read; and that anybody who was inspired by angels, or devils, who could get hold of spectacles, could at once read from a book.

We hear of one magician who, about the year Fifteen Hundred, made a box with a glass cover that magnified the contents. This great man would catch a flea and show it to the people. Then he would place the flea in the box and show it to them, and they would see that it had grown enormously in an instant. The man could make it big or little, by just taking off and putting on the cover of the box!

This individual worked wonders for a consideration, but Fate overtook him and he was smothered under a feather bed for having too much wizard in his cosmos. A wizard, be it known, is a male witch, and the Bible says, "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live," although it does not say anything about wizards.

But please note this: the wizard who had that magic box and flea had really the first microscope.

Galileo bought a pair of "magic glasses," or spectacles, about the year Sixteen Hundred Seven; and his action, in so doing, was freely criticized.

On a visit to Venice, where glass had been manufactured since long before the Flood, Galileo was looking through one of the glass-factories, just as visitors do now, and one of the workmen showed him a peculiar piece of glass which magnified the hairs on the back of his hand many times.

In a very few days after this, Galileo heard that a Dutch spectacle-maker had placed certain queer-shaped pieces of glass in a tube, and offered to sell this tube to the Government, so by its use, soldiers could see the movements of an enemy many miles away.

That night Galileo did not close his eyes in sleep. He thought out a plan by which he could place pieces of glass in a tube, and bring the stars close to the earth. By daylight the whole plan was clear in his mind, and he hastened to the shop of the glassmakers.

There, two lenses were made, one plano-convex, and the other plano-concave, and these were placed in a tube made of sheet copper. It was tested on distant objects; and behold! they were magnified by three. Would this tube show the stars magnified? Galileo knew of no reason why it should not, but he paced his room in hot impatience, waiting for the night to come with its twinkling wonders, that he might verify his convictions. When the first yellow star appeared in the West, Galileo turned his tube upon it, and behold! instead of twinkling points of light, he saw a round mass—a world—moving through space, and not a scintillating object with five points. The twinkling spikes, or points, were merely an optical illusion of the unaided senses.

Galileo made no secret of his invention. It was called "Galileo's Tube," but some of the priests called it Galileo's "Magic Tube."

Yet it marked an era in the scientific world. Galileo endeavored constantly to improve his instrument; and from a threefold magnifying power, he finally made one that magnified thirty-two times.

Galileo made hundreds of telescopes, and sold them at moderate prices to any one who would buy. He explained minutely the construction of the instrument, showing clearly how it was made in accordance with the natural laws of optics. His desire was to dissipate the superstition that there was something diabolical or supernatural about the "Magic Tube"—that, in fact, it was not magic, and the operator had no peculiar powers; you had simply to comply with the laws of Nature, and any one could see for himself.

It is hard for us, at this day, to understand the opposition that sprang up against the telescope. We must remember that at this time belief in witchcraft, fairies, sprites, ghosts, hobgoblins, magic and supernatural powers was common. Men who believe in miracles make rather poor scientists.

There were books about "Magic," written by so-called scientific men, whose standing in the world was quite as high as that of Galileo.

In Sixteen Hundred Ten, Galileo published his book entitled, "Sidera Medicea," wherein he described the wonders that could be seen in the heavens by the aid of the telescope. Among other things, he said the Milky Way was not a great streak of light, but was composed of a multitude of stars; and he made a map of the stars that could be seen only with the aid of the telescope.

There resided in Venice at this time a scientific man by the name of Porta, who was much more popular than Galileo. He was a priest, whose piety and learning was unimpeached.

The year after Galileo issued his book, Porta put out a work much more pretentious, called "Natural Magic." In this book Porta does not claim that magicians all have supernatural powers; but he goes on to prove how they deceive the world by the use of their peculiar apparatus, and intimates that they sometimes sell their souls to the Devil, and then are positively dangerous. He dives deep into science, history and his own imagination to prove things.

The man was no fool—he constructed a kaleidoscope that showed an absolute, geometrical symmetry, where in fact there was only confusion. He showed how, by the use of mirrors, things could be made big, small, tall, short, wide, crooked or distorted. He told of how magicians, by the use of Galileo's Tube, could show seven stars where there was only one; and he even made such a tube of his own and called the priests together to look through it. He painted stars on the glass, and had men look at the heavens. He even stuck a louse on the lens and located the beast in the heavens, for the benefit of a doubting Cardinal. It was all a joke, but at the time no sober, sincere man of Science could argue him down. He owned "bum" telescopes that proved all kinds of things, to the great amusement of the enemies of Galileo. The intent of Porta was to expose the frauds and fallacies of Galileo. Porta also claimed that he had seen telescopes by which you could look over a hill and around a corner, but he did not recommend them, since by their use things are often perceived that were not there. And so we see why the priests positively refused to look through Galileo's Tube, or to believe anything he said. Porta, and a few others like him, showed a deal more than Galileo could and offered to locate stars anywhere on order. Galileo had much offended these priests by his statements that the Bible did not contain the final facts of Science, and now they were getting even with a vengeance. It was all very much like the theological guffaw that swept over Christendom when Darwin issued his "Origin of Species," and Talmage and Spurgeon set their congregations in a roar by gently sarcastic references to monkey ancestry.

mid the general popping of theological small-arms, Galileo moved steadily forward. If he had many enemies he surely had a few friends. As he once had proved more than Pisa could digest, so now he was bringing to the surface of things more truth than Padua could assimilate.

Venice too was getting uncomfortable. Even the Doge said, in reply to an enthusiastic admirer of Galileo, "Your master is not famous: he is merely notorious."

It was discovered that Galileo had been living with a woman by the name of Marina Gamba, at Venice, even while he held the professorship at Padua, and that they had a son, Vincenzo Gamba, and two daughters. One of the enemy drew a map of the heavens, showing Galileo as the sun, Marina Gamba as the moon, and around them circulated numerous little satellites, which were supposed to be their children. The picture had so great a vogue that the Doge issued an order that all copies of it be destroyed.

Of Marina Gamba we know very little; but the fact that she made entries in Galileo's journal and kept his accounts proves that she was a person of considerable intelligence; and this, too, was at a time when semi-oriental ideas prevailed and education was supposedly beyond the feminine grasp.

Galileo did not marry, for the reason that he was practically a priest, a teacher in a religious school, living with and looking after the pupils; and the custom then was that whoever was engaged in such an occupation should not wed.

The stormy opposition to Galileo was not without its advantages. We are advertised no less by our rabid enemies than by our loving friends. Cosimo the Second, Grand Duke of Tuscany, had intimated that Florence would give the great astronomer a welcome. Galileo moved to Florence under the protection of Cosimo, intending to devote all his time to Science.

In giving up schoolteaching and popular lecturing, Galileo really made a virtue of necessity. No orthodox lyceum course would tolerate him; he was neither an impersonator nor an entertainer; the stereopticon and the melodramatic were out of his line, and his passion for truth made him impossible to the many.

He was treading the path of Bruno: the accusations, the taunts and jeers, the denials and denunciations, were urging him on to an unseemly earnestness.

Father Clavius said that Galileo never saw the satellites of Jupiter until he had made an instrument that would create them; and if God had intended that men should see strange things in the heavens, He would have supplied them sufficient eyesight. The telescope was really a devil's instrument.

Still another man declared that if the earth moved, acorns falling from a high tree would all fall behind the tree and not directly under it.

Father Brini said that if the earth revolved, we would all fall off of it into the air when it was upside down; moreover, its whirling through space would create a wind that would sweep it bald.

Father Caccini preached a sermon from the text, "Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven?" Only he changed the word "Galilee" to "Galileo," claiming it was the same thing, only different, and as reward for his wit he was made a bishop.

Cardinal Bellarmine, a man of great energy, earnest, zealous, sincere, learned—the Doctor Buckley of his day—showed how that: "if the Copernican Theory should prevail, it would be the absolute undoing of the Bible, and the destruction of the Church, rendering the death of Christ futile. If the earth is only one of many planets, and not the center of the universe, and the other planets are inhabited, the whole plan of salvation fails, since the inhabitants of the other spheres are without the Bible, and Christ did not die for them." This was the argument of Father Lecazre, and many others who took their cue from him.

Galileo was denounced as "atheist" and "infidel"—epithets that do not frighten us much now, since they have been applied to most of the really great and good men who have ever lived. But then such words set fire to masses of inflammable prejudices, and there were conflagrations of wrath and hate against which it was vain to argue.

The Archbishop of Pisa especially felt it incumbent upon him "to bring Galileo to justice."

Galileo was born at Pisa, educated there, taught in the University; and now he had disgraced the place and brought it into disrepute.

Galileo was still in communication with teachers at Pisa, and the Archbishop made it his business to have letters written to Galileo asking certain specific questions. One man, Castelli, declined to be used for the purpose of entrapping Galileo, but others there were who loaned themselves to the plan.

In Sixteen Hundred Sixteen, Galileo received a formal summons from Pope Paul the Fifth to come to Rome and purge himself of heresies that he had expressed in letters which were then in the hands of the Inquisition.

Galileo appealed to his friends at Florence, but they were powerless. When the Pope issued an order, it could not be waived. The greatest thinker of his time journeyed to Rome and faced the greatest theologian of his day, Cardinal Bellarmine.

The Cardinal firmly and clearly showed Galileo the error of his way. Galileo offered to prove for the Cardinal by astronomical observations that the Copernican Theory was true. Cardinal Bellarmine said that there was only one truth and that was spiritual truth. That the Bible was true, or it was not. If not, then was religion a fallacy and our hope of Heaven a delusion.

Galileo contended that the death of Christ had nothing to do with the truth, so Science and these things should not be shuffled and confused.

This attitude of mind greatly shocked the Inquisitors, and they made haste to inform the Pope, who at once issued an order that the astronomer should be placed in a dungeon until he saw fit to disavow that the sun was the center of the universe, and the earth moves.

A sort of compromise, it seems, was here effected by Galileo's promise not to further teach that the earth revolves.

He was kept at Rome under strict surveillance for some months, but was finally allowed to return to Florence, and cautioned that he must cease all public teaching, speaking and writing on the subject of astronomy. On March Fifth, Sixteen Hundred Sixteen, the consulting theologians of the Holy Office reiterated that the propositions of Galileo, that the sun is the center of the universe, and that the earth has a rotary motion, were "absurd in philosophy, heretical, and also contrary to Scripture."

The works of Copernicus were then placed upon the "Index," and Pope Paul issued a special decree, warning all Churchmen to "abjure, shun and forever abstain from giving encouragement, support, succor or friendship to any one who believed or taught that the earth revolves."

The name of Copernicus was not removed from the "Index" until the year Eighteen Hundred Eighteen.