Maccabees it is named Gennesar; while in the Gospels it is usually called Sea of Galilee, though once it is called Lake of Gennesaret (Luke v. 1) and twice Sea of Tiberias (John vi. 1, xxi. 1). The modern Arabic name is Bahr Tubariya, which is often rendered "Lake of Tiberias." Pliny refers to it as the Lake of Taricheae.

Like the Dead Sea it is a "rift " lake, being part of the great fault that formed the Jordan-Araba depression. Deposits show that originally it formed part of the great inland sea that filled this depression in Pleistocene times. The district on each side of the lake has a number of hot springs, at least one of which is beneath the sea itself, and has always shown indications of volcanic and other subterranean disturbances. It is especially liable to earthquakes. The water of the sea, though slightly brackish and not very clear, is generally used for drinking. The shores are for the greater part formed of fine gravel; some yards from the shore the bed is uniformly covered with fine greyish mud. The temperature in summer is tropical, but after noon falls about 10° F. owing to strong north-west winds. This range of temperature affects the water to a depth of about 49 ft.; below that depth the water is uniformly about 59° F. The sea is set deep in hills which rise on the cast side to a height of about 2000 ft. Sudden and violent storms (such as are described in Matt. viii. 23, xiv. 22, and the parallel passages) are often produced by the changes of temperature in the air resulting from these great differences of level.

Blennius and Clarias; and there is a great affinity between them and the fish of the East African lakes and streams. There are eight species of Chromis, most of which hatch their eggs and raise their young in the buccal cavities of the males. The Chromis simonis is popularly supposed to be the fish from which Peter took the picce of money (Matt. xvii. 27). Clarias macracanthus (Arab. Burbur) is the coracinus of Josephus. It was found by Lortet in the springs of 'Ain el-Madawwera, 'Ain et-Tinch and 'Ainet-Tabighah, on the lake shore where muddy, and in Lake Hulch. It is a scaleless, snake-like fish, often nearly 5 ft. long, which resembles the C. anguillarts of Egypt. From the absence of scales it was held by the Jews to be unclean, and some commentators suppose it to be the serpent of crested, eared, and little,-gulls and pelicans frequent the lake. Matt. vii. 10 and Luke xi. 11. Large numbers of grebes-great On its shores are tortoises, mud-turtles, crayfish and innumerable sand-hoppers; and at varying depths in the lake several species of Melania, Melanopsis, Neritina, Corbicula and Unio have been found. Antiquities. The principal sites of interest round the lake may be enumerated from north to west and from south to east. Kerazeh, the undoubted site of Chorazin, stands on a rocky spur 900 ft. above the lake, 2 m. north of the shore. Foundations and scattered stones cover the slopes and the flat valley below. On the west is a rugged gorge. In the middle of the ruins are the scattered remains of a synagogue of richly ornamental style built of black basalt. A small spring occurs on the north. Tell Hum (as the name is generally spelt, though Talḥūm would probably be preferable for several reasons) is an important ruin on the shore, south of the last-mentioned site. The remains consist of foundations and piles of stones (in spring concealed by gigantic thistles) extending about half a mile along the shore. The foundations of a fine synagogue, measuring 75 ft. by 57, and built in white limestone, have been excavated. A conspicuous building has been erected close to the water, from the fragments of the Tell Hum synagogue. Since the 4th century Tell Hum has been pointed out by all the Christian writers of importance as the site of Capernaum. Some modern geographers question this identification, but without sufficient reason (see CAPERNAUM). Minych is a ruined site at the north end of the plain of Gennesareth, 2 m. from the last, and close to the shore. There are extensive ruins on flat ground, consisting of mounds and foundations. Masonry of well-dressed stones has also been here discovered in course of excavation. Near the ruins are remains of an old khăn, which appears to have been built in the middle ages. This is another suggested identification for Capernaum; but all the remains belong to the Arab period. Between Tell Ḥum and Minych is Tell 'Oreimeh, the site of a forgotten Amorite city.

South of the supposed plain of Gennesareth is Mejdel, commonly supposed to represent the New Testament town of Magdala.

The Sea of Galilee is best seen from the top of the western precipices. It presents a desolate appearance. On the north the hills rise gradually from the shore, which is fringed with oleander bushes and indented with small bays. The ground is here covered with black basalt. On the west the plateau known as Sahel el-Ahma terminates in precipices 1700 ft. above the lake, and over these the black rocky tops called "the Horns of Hattin" are conspicuous objects. On the south is a broad valley through which the Jordan flows. On the east are furrowed and rugged slopes, rising to the great plateau of the Jaulan (Gaulonitis). The Jordan enters the Take through a narrow gorge between lower hills. A marshy plain, 2 m. long and 1 broad, called el-Batihah, exists immediately cast of the Jordan inlet. There is also on the west side of the lake a small plain called el-Ghuweir, formed by the junction of three large valleys. It measures 3 m. along the shore, and is 1 m. wide. This plain, naturally fertile, but now almost uncultivated, is supposed to be the plain of Gennesareth, described by Josephus (B. J.iii. 10, 8). On the east the hills approach in one place within 40 ft. of the water, but there is generally a width of about of a mile from the hills to the beach. On the west the flat ground at the foot of the hills has an average width of about 200 yds. A few scattered palms dot the western shores, and a palm grove is to be found near Kefr Harib on the south-east. The hot baths south of Tiberias include seven springs, the largest of which has a temperature of 137° F. In these A few lotus trees and some rock-cut tombs are here found beside springs a distinct rise in temperature was observed in 1837, when Tiberias and Safed were destroyed by an earthquake. The plain a miserable mud hamlet on the hill slope, with a modern tombof Gennesareth, with its environs, is the best-watered part of the lake-house (kubbeh). Passing beneath rugged cliffs a recess in the hills basin. North of this plain are the five springs of et-Tabighah, the is next reached, where stands Tubariya, the ancient Tiberias or largest of which was enclosed about a century ago in an octagonal Rakkath, containing 3000 inhabitants, more than half of whom are reservoir by 'Ali, son of Dhahr el-Amir, and the water led off by an aqueduct 52 ft. above the lake. The Tabighah springs, though Jews. The walls, flanked with round towers, but partly destroyed abundant, are warm and brackish. At the north end of the plain is by the earthquake of 1837, were built by Dhahr el-Amir, as was 'Ain et-Tineh ("spring of the fig-tree"), also a brackish spring the court-house. The two mosques, now partly ruinous, were with a good stream; south of the plain is 'Ain el-Bardeh ("the cold spring "), which is sweet, but scarcely lower in temperature than erected by his sons. the others. One of the most important springs is 'Ain el-Madawwera ("the round spring "), situated 1 m. from the south end of the plain and half a mile from the shore. The water rises in a circular well 32 ft. in diameter, and is clear and sweet, with a temperature of 73° F. The bottom is of loose sand, and the fish called coracinus by Josephus (B.J. iii. 10, 8) is here found (see below). Dr Tristram was the first explorer to identify this fish, and on account of its presence suggested the identification of the "round spring" with the fountain of Capharnaum, which, according to Josephus, watered the plain of Gennesareth. There is, however, a difficulty in this

identification; there are no ruins at 'Ain el-Madawwera.

Fauna and Flora. For half the year the hillsides are bare and steppe-like, but in spring are clothed with a subtropical vegetation. Oleanders flourish round the lake, and the large papyrus grows at 'Ain et-Tin as well as at the mouth of the Jordan. The lake swarms with fish, which are caught with nets by a gild of fishermen, whose boats are the only representatives of the many ships and boats which plied on the lake as late as the 10th century. Fishing was a lucrative industry at an early date, and the Jews ascribed the laws regulating it to Joshua. The fish, which were classed as clean and unclean, the good and bad of the parable (Matt. xiii. 47, 48), belong to the genera Chromis, Barbus, Capocta, Discognathus, Nemachilus,

There are remains of a Crusaders' church, and the tomb of the celebrated Maimonides is shown in the town, while Rabbi Aqība and Rabbi Meir lie buried outside. The ruins of the ancient city, including granite columns and traces of a sca-wall with towers, stretch southwards a mile beyond the modern town. An aqueduct in the cliff once brought water a distance of 9 m. from the south.

Kerak, at the south end of the lake, is an important site on a peninsula surrounded by the water of the lake, by the Jordan, and by a broad water ditch, while on the north-west a narrow neck of land remains. The plateau thus enclosed is partly artificial, and banked up 50 or 60 ft. above the water. A ruined citadel remains on the north-west, and on the east was a bridge over the Jordan; broken pottery and fragments of sculptured stone strew the site. The ruin of Kerak answers to the description given by Josephus of the city of Tarichcae, which lay 30 stadia from Tiberias, the hot baths being between the two cities. Tarichcae was situated, as is Kerak, on the shore below the cliffs, and partly surrounded by water, while before the city was a

plain (the Ghor). Pliny further informs us that Taricheae was at the south end of the Sea of Galilee. Sinn en-Nabrch, a ruin on a spur of the hills close to the last-mentioned site, represents the ancient Sennabris, where Vespasian (Josephus, B.J. iii. 9, 7) fixed his camp, advancing from Scythopolis (Beisen) on Tarichcae | and Tiberias. Sennabris was 30 stadia from Tiberias, or about the distance of the ruin now existing.

The eastern shores of the Sea of Galilee have been less fully explored than the western, and the sites are not so perfectly recovered. The site of Hippos, one of the cities of Decapolis, is fixed by Clermont-Ganneau at Khurbet Susich. Kalat el-Hosn (" castle of the stronghold ") is a ruin on a rocky spur opposite Tiberias. Two large ruined buildings remain, with traces of an old street and fallen columns and capitals. A strong wall once surrounded the town; a narrow neck of land exists on the east where the rock has been scarped. Rugged valleys enclose the site on the north and south; broken sarcophagi and rock-cut tombs are found beneath the ruin. This site is not identified; the suggestion that it is Gamala is doubtful, and not borne out by Josephus (War, iv. 1, 1), who says Gamala was over against Taricheae. Kersa, an insignificant ruin north of the last, is thought to represent the Gerasa or Gergesa of the 4th century, situated east of the lake; and the projecting spur of hill south of this ruin is conjectured to be the place where the swine ran violently down a steep place" (Matt. viii. 32).

his

mainly indebted for the success of his works. In 1581, while watching a lamp set swinging in the cathedral of Pisa, he observed that, whatever the range of its oscillations, they were invariably executed in equal times. The experimental verification of this fact led him to the important discovery of the isochronism of the pendulum. He at first applied the new principle to pulsemeasurement, and more than fifty years later turned it to account in the construction of an astronomical clock. Up to this time he was entirely ignorant of mathematics, his father having carefully held him aloof from a study which he rightly apprehended would lead to his total alienation from that of medicine. Accident, however, frustrated this purpose. A lesson in geometry, given by Ostilio Ricci to the pages of the grand-ducal court, chanced, tradition avers, to have Galileo for an unseen listener; attention was riveted, his dormant genius was roused, and he threw all his energies into the new pursuit thus unexpectedly presented to him. With Ricci's assistance, he rapidly mastered the elements of the science, and eventually extorted his father's reluctant permission to exchange Hippocrates and Galen for Euclid and Archimedes. In 1585 he was withdrawn from the university, through lack of means, before he had taken a degree, and returned to Florence, where his family habitually resided. We next hear of him as lecturing before the Florentine Academy on the site and dimensions of Dante's Inferno; and he shortly afterwards published an essay descriptive of his invention of the hydrostatic balance, which rapidly made his name known throughout Italy. His first patron was the Marchese Guidubaldo del Monte of Pesaro, a man equally eminent in science, and influential through family connexions. At the Marchese's request he wrote, in 1588, a treatise on the centre of gravity in solids, which obtained for him, together with the title of "the Archimedes of his time," the honourable though not lucrative post of mathematical lecturer at the Pisan university. During the ensuing two years (1589-1591) he carried on that remarkable series of experiments by which he established the first principles of dynamics and earned the undying hostility of bigoted Aristotelians. From the leaning tower of Pisa he afforded to all the professors and students of the university ocular demonstration of the falsehood of the Peripatetic dictum that heavy bodies fall with velocities proportional to their weights, and with unanswerable logic demolished all the time-honoured maxims of the schools From his earliest childhood Galileo, the eldest of the family, regarding the motion of projectiles, and elemental weight or was remarkable for intellectual aptitude as well as for mechanical levity. But while he convinced, he failed to conciliate his invention. His favourite pastime was the construction of original adversaries. The keen sarcasm of his polished rhetoric was not and ingenious toy-machines; but his application to literary calculated to soothe the susceptibilities of men already smarting studies was equally conspicuous. In the monastery of Vallom-under the deprivation of their most cherished illusions. He seems, brosa, near, Florence, where his education was principally conducted, he not only made himself acquainted with the best Latin authors, but acquired a fair command of the Greek tongue, thus laying the foundation of his brilliant and elegant style. From one of the monks he also received instruction in logic; but the subtleties of the scholastic science were thoroughly distasteful to him. A document published by F. Selmi in 1864 proves that he was at this time so far attracted towards a religious life as to have joined the novitiate; but his father, who had other designs for him, scized the opportunity of an attack of ophthalmia to withdraw him permanently from the care of the monks. Having had personal experience of the unremunerative character both of music and of mathematics, he desired that his son should apply himself to the cultivation of medicine, and, not without some straining of his slender resources, placed him, before he had completed his eighteenth year, at the university of Pisa. He accordingly matriculated there on the 5th of November 1581, and immediately entered upon attendance at the lectures of the celebrated physician and botanist, Andrea Cesalpino.

(C. R. C.; C. W. W.; R. A. S. M.) GALILEO GALILEI (1564-1642), Italian astronomer and experimental philosopher, was born at Pisa on the 15th of February 1564. His father, Vincenzio, was an impoverished descendant of a noble Florentine house, which had exchanged the surname of Bonajuti for that of Galilei, on the election, in 1343, of one of its members, Tommaso de' Bonajuti, to the college of the twelve Buonuomini. The family, which was nineteen times represented in the signoria, and in 1445 gave a gonfalonier to Florence, flourished with the republic and declined with its fall. Vincenzio Galilei was a man of better parts than fortune. He was a competent mathematician, wrote with considerable ability on the theory and practice of music, and was especially distinguished amongst his contemporaries for the grace and skill of his performance upon the lute. By his wife, Giulia Ammannati of Pescia, he had three sons and four daughters.

The natural gifts of the young student seemed at this time equally ready to develop in any direction towards which choice or hazard might incline them. In musical skill and invention he already vied with the best professors of the art in Italy; his personal taste would have led him to choose painting as his profession, and one of the most eminent artists of his day, Lodovico Cigoli, owned that to his judgment and counsel he was

in addition, to have compromised his position with the grandducal family by the imprudent candour with which he condemned a machine for clearing the port of Leghorn, invented by Giovanni de' Medici, an illegitimate son of Cosmo I. Princely favour being withdrawn, private rancour was free to show itself. He was publicly hissed at his lecture, and found it prudent to resign his professorship and withdraw to Florence in 1591. Through the death of his father in July of that year family cares and responsibilities devolved upon him, and thus his nomination to the chair of mathematics at the university of Padua, secured by the influence of the Marchese Guidubaldo with the Venetian senate, was welcome both as affording a relief from pecuniary embarrassment and as opening a field for scientific distinction. His residence at Padua, which extended over a period of eighteen years, from 1592 to 1610, was a course of uninterrupted prosperity. His appointment was three times renewed, on each occasion with the expressions of the highest esteem on the part of the governing body, and his yearly salary was progressively raised from 180 to 1000 florins. His lectures were attended by persons of the highest distinction from all parts of Europe, and such was the charm of his demonstrations that a hall capable of containing 2000 people had eventually to be assigned for the accommodation of the overflowing audiences which they attracted. His invention of the proportional compass or sector-an implement still used in geometrical drawing-dates from 1597; and about the same time he constructed the first thermometer, consisting of a bulb

and tube filled with air and water, and terminating in a vessel of | by the Venetian senate with the appointment for life to his water. In this instrument the results of varying atmospheric professorship, at an unprecedentedly high salary. His discovery pressure were not distinguishable from the expansive and con- of the “Medicean Stars" was acknowledged by his nomination tractive effects of heat and cold, and it became an efficient (July 12, 1610) as philosopher and mathematician extraordinary measure of temperature only when Rinieri, in 1646, introduced to the grand-duke of Tuscany. The emoluments of this office, the improvement of hermetically sealing the liquid in glass. The which involved no duties save that of continuing his scientific substitution, in 1670, of mercury for water completed the modern labours, were fixed at 1000 scudi; and it was the desire of thermometer. increased leisure, rather than the promptings of local patriotism, which induced him to accept an offer the original suggestion of which had indeed come from himself. Before the close of 1610 the memorable cycle of discoveries begun in the previous year was completed by the observation of the ansated or, as it appeared to Galileo, triple form of Saturn (the ring-formation was first recognized by Christiaan Huygens in 1655), of the phases of Venus, and of the spots upon the sun. As regards sun-spots, however, Johann Fabricius of Osteel in Friesland can claim priority of publication, if not of actual detection. In the spring of 1611 Galileo visited Rome, and exhibited in the gardens of the Quirinal Palace the telescopic wonders of the heavens to the most eminent personages at the pontifical court. Encouraged by the flattering reception accorded to him, he ventured, in his Letters on the Solar Spots, printed at Rome in 1613, to take up a more decided position towards that doctrine on the establishment of which, as he avowed in a letter to Belisario Vinta, secretary to the grand-duke, "all his life and being henceforward depended." Even in the time of Copernicus some well-meaning persons, especially those of the reformed persuasion, had suspected a discrepancy between the new view of the solar system and certain passages of Scripture-a suspicion strengthened by the antiChristian inferences drawn from it by Giordano Bruno; but the question was never formally debated until Galileo's brilliant disclosures, enhanced by his formidable dialectic and enthusiastic zeal, irresistibly challenged for it the attention of the authorities. Although he had no desire to raise the theological issue, it must be admitted that, the discussion once set on foot, he threw himself into it with characteristic impetuosity, and thus helped to precipitate a decision which it was his interest to avert. December 1613 a Benedictine monk named Benedetto Castelli, at that time professor of mathematics at the university of Pisa, wrote to inform Galileo of a recent discussion at the grandducal table, in which he had been called upon to defend the Copernican doctrine against theological objections. This task Castelli, who was a steady friend and disciple of the Tuscan astronomer, seems to have discharged with moderation and success. Galileo's answer, written, as he said himself, currente calamo, was an exposition of a formal theory as to the relations of physical science to Holy Writ, still further developed in an elaborate apology addressed by him in the following year (1614) to Christina of Lorraine, dowager grand-duchess of Tuscany. Not satisfied with explaining adverse texts, he met his opponents with unwise audacity on their own ground, and endeavoured to produce scriptural confirmation of a system which seemed to the ignorant many an incredible paradox, and to the scientific few a beautiful but daring innovation. The rising agitation on the subject, fomented for their own purposes by the rabid Aristotelians of the schools, was heightened rather than allayed by these manifestoes, and on the fourth Sunday of the following Advent found a voice in the pulpit of Santa Maria

Galileo seems, at an early period of his life, to have adopted the Copernican theory of the solar system, and was deterred from avowing his opinions-as is proved by his letter to Kepler of August 4, 1597-by the fear of ridicule rather than of persecution. The appearance, in September 1604, of a new star in the constellation Serpentarius afforded him indeed an opportunity, of which he eagerly availed himself, for making an onslaught upon the Aristotelian axiom of the incorruptibility of the heavens; but he continued to conform his public teachings in the main to Ptolemaic principles, until the discovery of a novel and potent implement of research in the shape of the telescope (q.v.) placed at his command startling and hitherto unsuspected evidence as to the constitution and mutual relations of the heavenly bodies. Galileo was not the original inventor of the telescope. That honour must be assigned to Johannes Lippershey, an obscure optician of Middleburg, who, on the 2nd of October 1608, petitioned the states-general of the Low Countries for exclusive rights in the manufacture of an instrument for increasing the apparent size of remote objects. A rumour of the new invention, which reached Venice in June 1609, sufficed to set Galileo on the track; and after one night's profound meditation on the principles of refraction, he succeeded in producing a telescope of threefold magnifying power. Upon this first attempt he rapidly improved, until he attained to a power of thirty-two, and his instruments, of which he manufactured hundreds with his own hands, were soon in request in every part of Europe. Two lenses only-a planoconvex and a plano-concave-were needed for the composition of each, and this simple principle is that still employed in the construction of opera-glasses. Galileo's direction of his new instrument to the heavens formed an era in the history of astronomy. Discoveries followed upon it with astounding rapidity and in bewildering variety. The Sidereus Nuncius, published at Venice early in 1610, contained the first-fruits of the new mode of investigation, which were sufficient to excite learned amazement on both sides of the Alps. The mountainous configuration of the moon's surface was there first described, and the so-called "phosphorescence" of the dark portion of our satellite attributed to its true cause-namely, illumination by sunlight reflected from the earth. All the time-worn fables and conjectures regarding the composition of the Milky Way were at once dissipated by the simple statement that to the eye, reinforced by the telescope, it appeared as a congeries of lesser stars, while the great nebulae were equally declared to be resolvable into similar elements. But the discovery which was at once perceived to be most important in itself, and most revolutionary in its effects, was that of Jupiter's satellites, first seen by Galileo on the 7th of January 1610, and by him named Sidera Medicca, in honour of the grand-duke of Tuscany, Cosmo II., who had been his pupil, and was about to become his employer. An illustration is, with the general run of mankind, more powerful to convince than an argument; and the cogency of the visible plea for the Coper-Novella. Padre Caccini's denunciation of the new astronomy nican theory offered by the miniature system, t then first disclosed to view, was recognizable in the triumph of its advocates as well as in the increased acrimony of its opponents.

In September 1610 Galileo finally abandoned Padua for Florence. His researches with the telescope had been rewarded

The word telescope, from ride, far, oxorev, to view, was invented by Demiscianus, an eminent Greek scholar, at the request of Prince Cesi, president of the Lyncean Academy. It was used by Galileo as carly as 1612, but was not introduced into England until much later. In 1655 the word telescope was inserted and explained in Bagwell's Mysteries of Astronomy, trunk or cylinder being the terms until then ordinarily employed.

Leonardo da Vinci, more than a hundred years earlier, had come to the same conclusion.

In

was indeed disavowed and strongly condemned by his superiors; nevertheless, on the 5th of February 1615, another Dominican monk named Lorini laid Galileo's letter to Castelli before the Inquisition.

Cardinal Robert Bellarmin was at that time by far the most learning and upright piety, but, although personally friendly to influential member of the Sacred College. He was a man of vast Galileo, there is no doubt that he saw in his scientific teachings a danger to religion. The year 1615 seems to have been a period of suspense. Galileo received, as the result of a conference between Cardinals Bellarmin and Del Monte, a semi-official warning to avoid theology, and limit himself to physical reasoning. freely," he was told by Monsignor Dini, "but keep outside the

"Write

sacristy." Unfortunately, he had already committed himself to | marked distinction with which he was received on his visit of dangerous ground. In December he repaired personally to Rome, congratulation to Rome in 1624 encouraged him to hope for the full of confidence that the weight of his arguments and the vivacity realization of his utmost wishes. He received every mark of of his eloquence could not fail to convert the entire pontifical private favour. The pope admitted him to six long audiences in court to his views. He was cordially received, and eagerly the course of two months, wrote an enthusiastic letter to the listened to, but his imprudent ardour served but to injure his grand-duke praising the great astronomer, not only for his cause. On the 24th of February 1616 the consulting theologians distinguished learning, but also for his exemplary piety, and of the Holy Office characterized the two propositions-that the granted a pension to his son Vincenzio, which was afterwards sun is immovable in the centre of the world, and that the earth has transferred to himself, and paid, with some irregularities, to the a diurnal motion of rotation-the first as "absurd in philosophy, end of his life. But on the subject of the decree of 1616, the and formally heretical, because expressly contrary to Holy revocation of which Galileo had hoped to obtain through his Scripture," and the second as "open to the same censure in personal influence, he found him inexorable. Yet there seemed philosophy, and at least erroneous as to faith." Two days later reason to expect that it would at least be interpreted in a liberal Galileo was, by command of the pope (Paul V.), summoned spirit, and Galileo's friends encouraged his imprudent confidence to the palace of Cardinal Bellarmin, and there officially ad- by eagerly retailing to him every papal utterance which it was monished not thenceforward to "hold, teach or defend" the possible to construe in a favourable sense. To Cardinal Hohencondemned doctrine. This injunction he promised to obey. zollern, Urban was reported to have said that the theory of the On the 5th of March the Congregation of the Index issued a decree earth's motion had not been and could not be condemned as reiterating, with the omission of the word "heretical," the censure heretical, but only as rash; and in 1630 the brilliant Dominican of the theologians, suspending, usque corrigatur, the great work of monk Tommaso Campanella wrote to Galileo that the pope had Copernicus, De revolutionibus orbium coelestium, and absolutely expressed to him in conversation his disapproval of the prohiprohibiting a treatise by a Carmelite monk named Foscarini, bitory decree. Thus, in the full anticipation of added renown, which treated the same subject from a theological point of view. and without any misgiving as to ulterior consequences, Galileo At the same time it was given to be understood that the new set himself, on his return to Florence, to complete his famous theory of the solar system might be held ex hypothesi, and the but ill-starred work, the Dialogo dei due massimi sistemi del trivial verbal alterations introduced into the Polish astonomer's mondo. Finished in 1630, it was not until January 1632 that it book in 1620, when the work of revision was completed by Cardinal emerged from the presses of Landini at Florence. The book Gaetani, confirmed this interpretation. This edict, it is essential was originally intended to appear in Rome, but unexpected to observe, the responsibility for which rests with a disciplinary obstacles interposed. The Lincean Academy collapsed with the congregation in no sense representing the church, was never death of Prince Federigo Cesi, its founder and president; an confirmed by the pope, and was virtually repealed in 1757 under outbreak of plague impeded communication between the various Benedict XIV. Italian cities; and the imprimatur was finally extorted, rather than accorded, under the pressure of private friendship and powerful interest. A tumult of applause from every part of Europe followed its publication; and it would be difficult to find in any language a book in which animation and elegance of style are so happily combined with strength and clearness of scientific exposition. Three interlocutors, named respectively Salviati, Sagredo, and Simplicio, take part in the four dialogues of which the work is composed. The first-named expounds the views of the author; the second is an eager and intelligent listener; the third represents a well-meaning but obtuse Peripatetic, whom the others treat at times with undisguised contempt. 'Salviati and Sagredo took their names from two of Galileo's early friends, the former a learned Florentine, the latter a distinguished Venetian

commentator of Aristotle, but the choice was doubtless instigated by a sarcastic regard to the double meaning of the word. There were not wanting those who insinuated that Galileo intended to depict the pope himself in the guise of the simpleton of the party; and the charge, though preposterous in itself, was supported by certain imprudences of expression, which Urban was not per mitted to ignore.

Galileo returned to Florence three months later, not ill-pleased, as his letters testify, with the result of his visit to Rome. He brought with him, for the refutation of calumnious reports circulated by his enemies, a written certificate from Cardinal Bellarmin, to the effect that no abjuration had been required of or penance imposed upon him. During a prolonged audience he had received from the pope assurances of private esteem and personál protection; and he trusted to his dialectical ingenuity to find the means of presenting his scientific convictions under the transparent veil of an hypothesis. Although a sincere Catholic, he seems to have laid but little stress on the secret admonition of the Holy Office, which his sanguine temperament encouraged him gradually to dismiss from his mind. He preserved no written memorandum of its terms, and it was represented to him, accord-gentleman; Simplicio ostensibly derived his from the Cilician ing to his own deposition in 1633, solely by Cardinal Bellarmin's certificate, in which, for obvious reasons, it was glossed over rather than expressly recorded. For seven years, nevertheless, during which he led a life of studious retirement in the Villa Segni at Bellosguardo, near Florence, he maintained an almost unbroken silence. At the end of that time he appeared in public with his Saggiatore, a polemical treatise written in reply to the Libra astronomica of Padre Grassi (under the pseudonym of Lotario Sarsi), the Jesuit astronomer of the Collegio Romano. The subject in debate was the nature of comets, the conspicuous appearance of three of which bodies in the year 1618 furnished the occasion of the controversy. Galileo's views, although erroneous, since he held comets to be mere atmospheric emanations reflecting sunlight after the evanescent fashion of a halo or a rainbow, were expressed with such triumphant vigour, and embellished with such telling sarcasms, that his opponent did not venture upon a reply. The Saggiatore was printed at Rome in October 1623 by the Academy of the Lincei, of which Galileo was a member, with a dedication to the new pope, Urban VIII., and notwithstanding some passages containing a covert defence of Copernican opinions, was received with acclamation by ecclesiastical, no less than by scientific authorities.

Everything seemed now to promise a close of unbroken prosperity to Galileo's career. Maffeo Barberini, his warmest friend and admirer in the Sacred College, was, by the election of the 8th of August 1623, seated on the pontifical throne; and the

It was at once evident that the whole tenor of this remarkable work was in flagrant contradiction with the edict passed sixteen years before its publication, as well as with the author's personal pledge of conformity to it. The ironical submission with which it opened, and the assumed indetermination with which it closed, were hardly intended to mask the vigorous assertion of Copernican principles which formed its substance. It is a singular circumstance, however, that the argument upon which Galileo mainly relied as furnishing a physical demonstration of the truth of the new theory rested on a misconception. The ebb and flow of the tides were, he asserted, a visible proof of the terrestrial double movement, since they resulted from inequalities in the absolute velocities through space of the various parts of the earth's surface, due to its rotation. To this notion, which took its rise in a confusion of thought, he attached capital importance, and he treated with scorn Kepler's suggestion that a certain occult attraction of the moon was in some way concerned in the phenomenon. The theological censures which the book did not fail to incur were not slow in making themselves felt. Towards

the end of August the sale was prohibited; on the 1st of October | the author was cited to Rome by the Inquisition. He pleaded his age, now close upon seventy years, his infirm health, and the obstacles to travel caused by quarantine regulations; but the pope was sternly indignant at what he held to be his ingratitude and insubordination, and no excuse was admitted. At length, on the 13th of February 1633, he arrived at the residence of Niccolini, the Tuscan ambassador to the pontifical court, and there abode in retirement for two months. From the 12th to the 30th of April he was detained in. the palace of the Inquisition, where he occupied the best apartments and was treated with unexampled indulgence. On the 30th he was restored to the hospitality of Niccolini, his warm partisan. The accusation against him was that he had written in contravention of the decree of 1616, and in defiance of the command of the Holy Office communicated to him by Cardinal Bellarmin; and his defence consisted mainly in a disavowal of his opinions, and an appeal to his good intentions. On the 21st of June he was finally examined under menace of torture; but he continued to maintain his assertion that after its condemnation by the Congregation of the Index, he had never held the Copernican theory. Since the publication of the documents relating to this memorable trial, there can no longer be any doubt, not only that the threat of torture was not carried into execution, but that it was never intended that it should be. On the 22nd of June, in the church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva, Galileo read his recantation, and received his sentence. He was condemned, as "vehemently suspected of heresy," to incarceration at the pleasure of the tribunal, and by way of penance was enjoined to recite once a week for three years the seven penitential psalms. This sentence was signed by seven cardinals, but did not receive the customary papal ratification. The legend according to which Galileo, rising from his knees after repeating the formula of abjuration, stamped on the ground, and exclaimed," Eppur si muove!" is, as may readily be supposed, entirely apocryphal. Its carliest ascertained appearance is in the Abbé Irailh's Querelles littéraires (vol. iii. p. 49, 1761).

and he was engaged in dictating to his disciples, Viviani and Torricelli, his latest ideas on the theory of impact when he was seized with the slow fever which in two months brought him to the grave. On the 8th of January 1642 he closed his long life of triumph and humiliation, which just spanned the interval between the death of Michelangelo and the birth of Isaac Newton. The direct services which Galileo rendered to astronomy are virtually summed up in his telescopic discoveries. To the theoretical perfection of the science he contributed little or nothing. He pointed out indeed that the so-called "third motion," introduced by Copernicus to account for the constant parallelism of the earth's axis, was a superfluous complication. But he substituted the equally unnecessary hypothesis of a magnetic attraction, and failed to perceive that the phenomenon to be explained was, in relation to absolute space, not a movement but the absence of movement. The circumstance, however, which most seriously detracts from his scientific reputation is his neglect of the discoveries made during his lifetime by the greatest of his contemporaries. Kepler's first and second laws were published in 1609, and his third ten years later. By these momentous inductions the geometrical theory of the solar system was perfected, and a hitherto unimagined symmetry was perceived to regulate the mutual relations of its members. But by Galileo they were passed over in silence. In his Dialogo dei massimi sistemi, printed not less than thirteen years after the last of the three laws had been given to the world, the epicycles by which Copernicus, adhering to the ancient postulate of uniform circular motion, had endeavoured to reduce to theory the irregularities of the planetary movements, were neither expressly adopted nor expressly rejected; and the conclusion seems inevitable that this grave defection from the cause of progress was due to his perhaps unconscious reluctance to accept discoveries which he had not originated. His name is nevertheless justly associated with that vast extension of the bounds of the visible universe which has rendered modern astronomy the most sublime of sciences, and his telescopic observations are a standing monument to his sagacity and acumen.

With the sure instinct of genius, he seized the characteristic features of the phenomena presented to his attention, and his inferences, except when distorted by polemical exigencies, have been strikingly confirmed by modern investigations. Of his two capital errors, regarding respectively the theory of the tides and the nature of comets, the first was insidiously recommended to him by his passionate desire to find a physical confirmation of the earth's double motion; the second was adopted for the purpose of rebutting an anti-Copernican argument founded on the planetary analogies of those erratic subjects of the sun. Within two years of their first discovery, he had constructed approximately accurate tables of the revolutions of Jupiter's satellites, and he proposed their frequent eclipses as a means of determining longitudes, not only on land, but at sea. This method, on which he laid great

Galileo remained in the custody of the Inquisition from the 21st to the 24th of June, on which day he was relegated to the Villa Medici on the Trinità de' Monti. Thence, on the 6th of July, he was permitted to depart for Siena, where he spent several months in the house of the archbishop, Ascanio Piccolomini, one of his numerous and trusty friends. It was not until December that his earnest desire of returning to Florence was realized, and the remaining eight years of his life were spent in his villa at Arcetri called "Il Giojello," in the strict seclusion which was the prescribed condition of his comparative freedom. Domestic afflictions combined with numerous and painful infirmities to embitter his old age. His sister-in-law and her whole family, who came to live with him on his return from Rome, perished shortly afterwards of the plague; and on the 2nd of April 1634 died, to the inexpressible grief of her father, his eldest and best-stress, and for the facilitation of which he invented a binocular beloved daughter, a nun in the convent of San Matteo at Arcetri. Galileo was never married; but by a Venetian woman named Marina Gamba he had three children-a son who married and left descendants, and two daughters who took the veil at an early age. His prodigious mental activity continued undiminished to the last. In 1636 he completed his Dialoghi delle nuove scienze, in which he recapitulated the results of his early experiments and mature meditations on the principles of mechanics. This in many respects his most valuable work was printed by the Elzevirs at Leiden in 1638, and excited admiration equally universal and more lasting than that accorded to his astronomical treatises. His last telescopic discovery-that of the moon's diurnal and monthly librations-was made in 1637, only a few months before his eyes were for ever closed in hopeless blindness. It was in this condition that Milton found him when he visited him at Arcetri in 1638. But the fire of his genius was not even yet extinct. He continued his scientific correspondence with unbroken interest and undiminished logical acumen; he thought out the application of the pendulum to the regulation of clockwork, which Huygens successfully realized fifteen years later;

glass, and devised some skilful mechanical contrivances, was offered by him in 1616 to the Spanish government, and afterwards to that of Tuscany, but in each case unsuccessfully; and the close of his life was occupied with prolonged but fruitless negotiations on the same subject with the states-general of Holland. The idea, though ingenious, has been found of little practical utility at sea.

A series of careful observations made him acquainted with the principal appearances revealed by modern instruments in the solar spots. He pointed out that they were limited to a certain defined zone on the sun's surface; he noted the faculae with which they are associated, the penumbra by which they are bordered, their slight proper motions and their rapid changes of form. He inferred from the regularity of their general movements the rotation of the sun on its axis in a period of little less than a month; and he grounded on the varying nature of the paths seemingly traversed by them a plausible, though inconclusive, Twice in argument in favour of the earth's annual revolution. the year, he observed, they seem to travel across the solar disk in straight lines; at other times, in curves. These appearances he