Tiraboschi expresses himself to the same effect. And Alberi, the learned editor of the only complete edition of Galileo's works, says: "Crediamo col Tiraboschi, che il fervore e l'impetuosità sua contribuissero ad irritare gli avversari del sistema Copernico."

"It is doubtless an extraordinary fact," says the Edinburgh Review, (October, 1837,) "in the history of the human mind, that the very same doctrines which had been published with impunity by Copernicus, and in a work, too, dedicated to the Roman Pontiff, Paul III., for the avowed purpose of sheltering them under his sacred aegis, should, nearly a hundred years afterward, when civilization had made some progress, have subjected Galileo to all the terrors of the Inquisition. If we study, however, the conduct of Galileo himself, and consider his temper and tone of mind, and his connection with a political party unfriendly to religion, as well as to papal government, we shall be at no loss to account for the different feelings with which the writings of Copernicus and Galileo were received. Had the Tuscan philosopher been a recluse student of nature who, like Copernicus, announced his opinions as accessions to knowledge, and not as subversive of old and deeply cherished errors; had he stood alone as the fearless arbiter and champion of truth, the Roman pontiffs would, probably, like Paul III., have tolerated the new doctrine; and like him, too, they might probably have embraced it. But Galileo contrived to surround the truth with every variety of obstruction. The tide of knowledge which had hitherto advanced in peace, he crested with angry breakers; and he involved in its surf both his friends and his enemies. When the more violent partisans of the church, in opposition to the wishes of some of its higher functionaries, and spurred on by the school-men and the personal enemies of Galileo, had fixed the public attention upon the obnoxious doctrine, it would not have been easy for the most tolerant pontiff to dismiss charges of heresy and irreligion without some formal decision on the subject."

The astronomer Délambre: "On aurait passé à Galileo, de parler en mathématicien de l'excellence de la nouvelle hypothèse; mais on soutenait qu'il devait abandonner aux théologiens l'interpretation de l'Ecriture." (It was free to Galileo to speak as a mathematician of the merit of the new doctrine; but it was claimed that he should leave interpretation of Scripture to the theologians.)

The historian Hallam: "For eighty years the theory of the earth's motion had been maintained without censure, and it could only be the greater boldness of Galileo which drew upon him the notice of the church."

Philarète Chasles, (Professor in the College of France:) "Galileo, a man of vast and fertile intellect, was not in advance of his age and country; he was incapable either of defending the truth or eluding the efforts of those who endeavored to destroy it. In his contests with the latter, he showed neither grandeur of mind nor frankness of character. Unstable, timorous, equivocating, and supple," etc., etc.

Alfred von Reumont, many years Prussian minister at the Court of Tuscany, (see his Beiträge zur Italienischen Geschichte, Berlin, 1853:) "Galileo's great mistake was, that he insisted on bringing into conformity with the Scriptures the doctrine of the earth's motion—a hypothetical and then incomplete doctrine, and one denied by many of the most learned, such as Bacon and Tycho Brahe. So that, in the interpretation of certain passages in the Bible, an arbitrary discretion was assumed which the Church, according to her invariable principles, could not concede to an astronomical doctrine as yet unproved."

Such citations as these might be multiplied indefinitely. But they are sufficient, and more than sufficient.

Copernicus, as we have seen, dedicated his great work to Pope Paul III., with these remarkable words: "Astronomers being permitted to imagine circles, to explain the motions of the stars, I thought myself equally entitled to examine if the supposition of the motion of the earth would make the theory of these appearances more exact and simple."

Eighty years had gone by, and the system had undergone no "persecution," in Italy at least. Galileo was now sixty years of age; nearly forty of these years had been passed, not only in the safe but triumphant and even aggressive and defiant vindication of his astronomical and physical doctrines, without let or hindrance save the warning not to trench on the theological view. But this he could not bring himself to consent to, and in 1618, in publishing his Theory of the Tides, he indulged in a stream of sarcasm and insult against the decree of 1616. "The same hostile tone, more or less," says Drinkwater, "pervaded all his writings; and while he labored to sharpen the edge of his satire, he endeavored to guard himself against its effects by an affectation of the humblest deference to the decisions of theology." Nor was Galileo's letter to Christina forgotten. It was a letter, widely diffused at Rome and in Tuscany, in which he undertook to prove theologically, and from reasons drawn from the fathers, that the terms of Scripture might be reconciled with his new doctrines, etc. Délambre, Hallam, and Biot all take the same view of it.

The Celebrated Dialogues.