als of heresy and sedition, that opinions
maintained with impunity by one individual, have, in the same age,
brought others to the stake or to the scaffold. The results of deep
research or extravagant speculation seldom provoke hostility, when
meekly announced as the deductions of reason or the convictions of
conscience. As the dreams of a recluse or of an enthusiast, they may
excite pity or call forth contempt; but, like seed quietly cast into the
earth, they will rot and germinate according to the vitality with which
they are endowed. But, if new and startling opinions are thrown in the
face of the community--if they are uttered in triumph or in insult--in
contempt of public opinion, or in derision of cherished errors, they
lose the comeliness of truth in the rancour of their propagation; and
they are like seed scattered in a hurricane, which only irritates and
blinds the husbandman. Had Galileo concluded his _System of the World_
with the quiet peroration of his apologist Campanella, and dedicated it
to the Pope, it might have stood in the library of the Vatican, beside
the cherished though equally heretical volume of Copernicus.

In the abjuration of his opinions by Galileo, Pope Urban VII. did not
fail to observe the full extent of his triumph; and he exhibited the
utmost sagacity in the means which he employed to secure it. While he
endeavoured to overawe the enemies of the church by the formal
promulgation of Galileo's sentence and abjuration, and by punishing the
officials who had assisted in obtaining the license to print his work,
he treated Galileo with the utmost lenity, and yielded to every request
that was made to diminish, and almost suspend, the constraint under
which he lay. The sentence of abjuration was ordered to be publicly read
at several universities. At Florence the ceremonial was performed in the
church of Santa Croce, and the friends and disciples of Galileo were
especially summoned to witness the public degradation of their master.
The inquisitor at Florence was ordered to be reprimanded for his
conduct; and Riccardi, the master of the sacred palace, and Ciampoli,
the secretary of Pope Urban himself, were dismissed from their
situations.

Galileo had remained only four days in the prison of the Inquisition,
when, on the application of Niccolini, the Tuscan ambassador, he was
allowed to reside with him in his palace. As Florence still suffered
under the contagious disease which we have already