[GALILEO IN THE CHURCH AT PISA.]
One day Galileo, a young student of medicine at Pisa, saw the great bronze chandelier of the cathedral swing to and fro. He watched it carefully, and found that it moved regularly. It always came back to the same place. He thought he could imitate it, and suspended a weight to a string, and thus formed the first pendulum. His invention has never ceased to be of use to every one. The pendulum was attached to the works of a clock, and has from that moment continued the chief means of measuring time. It rules every family, directs the business of cities, and tells when to go to school and when school is out. The great clock in the City Hall and the clocks in all the steeples and towers are guided by Galileo's pendulum. The wooden clock we buy for two or three dollars, and the costly French clock that ticks on the mantel, owe their chief value to the invention of the young student. The pendulum, wherever it swings to and fro, seems to speak of Galileo.
GALILEO IN THE CHURCH AT PISA.
He was born at Pisa in 1564, the same year with Shakspeare. His father was poor, and wished to apprentice him to the wool trade. But Galileo showed a strong love for mechanics and mathematics; he professed to study medicine at the University of Pisa, but was always busy with mechanical experiments. He worked incessantly with his tools and books, and produced a great number of inventions, more, perhaps, than any other man. From youth to extreme old age he was constantly in his workshop, and labored while others slept. One of his inventions was the thermometer that measures the heat or cold of every land. It is used to mark the temperature of the highest mountains, and is plunged into the depths of the sea; tells the boiling-point and the freezing-point, and governs in the house and the factory.
At last, in 1609, Galileo invented the telescope. It had been thought of in Holland, but never brought to any perfection. Galileo caught up the idea, and produced the remarkable instrument that brings distant things near. Until that time no one had supposed men could see beyond a certain limit, and the sailor on the ocean and the travellers by land could look only a few miles before them. Galileo's first telescope was made of lead, small and imperfect, but it was polished and perfected with his wonderful skill and industry. It filled all Italy and Europe with an intense excitement. Men came in crowds to look through the first telescope. At Venice, where Galileo was staying, the merchants climbed to the top of the highest tower to see their ships far off on the water two hours before they could have been seen without the telescope. Galileo was enriched with honors and a large salary. He went to Florence, and was received with wonder and delight by great crowds of his countrymen.
Next came a still more startling discovery. Galileo turned his telescope to the skies, and saw things that had never before been witnessed by mortal eyes. The Milky Way dissolved into a bed of stars; Jupiter showed its four satellites, Saturn its rings; the moon seemed covered with mountains, seas, and rivers. The heavens seemed revealed to man, and Galileo soon after, startled by his own discoveries, published his "Message from the Stars." In this pamphlet he describes the wonders of the skies he was the first to see. It was read all over Europe, and the people and the princes heard with awe the account of the new heavens. Many persons denied that there was any truth in the narrative; it was looked upon as a kind of "Moon hoax" or "Gulliver's Travels"; some said it was an optical delusion, and Galileo was attacked by a thousand enemies.
His health was always delicate, and he was always kept poor and in debt by a worthless son and an idle brother. His life, so prosperous, ended in misfortune. His telescope proved to him that the world moved round the sun, and he ventured to say so. Unfortunately the Inquisition and nearly every one else believed that the sun moved round the earth. Galileo was forced to say that he was mistaken. He was tried at Rome, condemned, and obliged on his knees to confess his error, and during the last years of his life was kept a prisoner in his own house near Florence. He passed his time in constant work, studying the moon, and making instruments. At last he became blind. Here Milton visited him, and looked upon him with veneration. He died in 1642, and was buried privately in the church of Santa Croce, at Florence.
Galileo was of a pleasant countenance, always cheerful. His hair was of a reddish tinge, his eyes bright and sparkling until they became dimmed like Milton's. His figure was strong and well formed. It was said of him that no one had ever seen him idle. He was never weary of improving his telescope. The first one he made only magnified three times, a second eight times, and then he made one that magnified thirty times. It is the men who are never idle that help themselves and others.