ssigned to Galileo was filled up
throughout its rugged outline with events even of dramatic interest. But
though it was emblazoned with achievements of transcendent magnitude,
yet his noblest discoveries were the derision of his contemporaries, and
were even denounced as crimes which merited the vengeance of Heaven.
Though he was the idol of his friends, and the favoured companion of
princes, yet he afterwards became the victim of persecution, and spent
some of his last hours within the walls of a prison; and though the
Almighty granted him, as it were, a new sight to descry unknown worlds
in the obscurity of space, yet the eyes which were allowed to witness
such wonders, were themselves doomed to be closed in darkness.

Such were the lights and shadows in which history delineates

"The starry Galileo with his woes."[1]

[1] Childe Harold, canto iv. stanza liv.

But, however powerful be their contrasts, they are not unusual in
their proportions. The balance which has been struck between his days of
good and evil, is that which regulates the lot of man, whether we study
it in the despotic sway of the autocrat, in the peaceful inquiries of
the philosopher, or in the humbler toils of ordinary life.

Galileo Galilei was born at Pisa, on the 15th of February, 1564, and was
the eldest of a family of three sons and three daughters. Under the name
of Bonajuti, his noble ancestors had filled high offices at Florence;
but about the middle of the 14th century they seem to have abandoned
this surname for that of Galileo. Vincenzo Galilei, our author's father,
was himself a philosopher of no mean powers; and though his talents seem
to have been exercised only in the composition of treatises on the
theory and practice of music, yet he appears to have anticipated even
his son in a just estimate of the philosophy of the age, and in a
distinct perception of the true method of investigating truth.[2]

[2] Life of Galileo, Library of Useful Knowledge, p. 1.

The early years of Galileo were, like those of almost all great
experimental philosophers, spent in the construction of instruments and
pieces of machinery, which were calculated chiefly to amuse himself and
his schoolfellows. This employment of his hands, however, did not
interfere with his regular studies; and though, from the straitened
circumstances of his father, he was educated under considerable
disadvantages, yet he acquired the elements of classical lit