continue to enjoy these
sources of happiness is the earnest prayer of,

MY LORD,

Your Lordship's

Most faithful and obedient servant,

DAVID BREWSTER.

ST LEONARDS, ST ANDREWS,

October 12, 1840.

CONTENTS.

LIFE OF GALILEO.

Page.
CHAPTER I. 1

Peculiar interest attached to his Life--His Birth--His early
studies--His passion for Mathematics--His work on the Hydrostatic
Balance--Appointed Lecturer on Mathematics at Pisa--His antipathy
to the Philosophy of Aristotle--His contentions with the
Aristotelians--Chosen Professor of Mathematics in Padua--Adopts the
Copernican system, but still teaches the Ptolemaic doctrine--His
alarming illness--He observes the new Star in 1604--His Magnetical
experiments,

CHAPTER II. 20

Cosmo, Grand Duke of Tuscany, invites Galileo to Pisa--Galileo
visits Venice in 1609, where he first hears of the Telescope--He
invents and constructs one, which excites a great
sensation--Discovers Mountains in the Moon, and Forty Stars in the
Pleiades--Discovers Jupiter's Satellites in 1610--Effect of this
discovery on Kepler--Manner in which these discoveries were
received--Galileo appointed Mathematician to Cosmo--Mayer claims the
discovery of the Satellites of Jupiter--Harriot observes them in
England in October 1610,

CHAPTER III. 42

Galileo announces his discoveries in Enigmas--Discovers the
Crescent of Venus--the Ring of Saturn--the Spots on the
Sun--Similar Observations made in England by Harriot--Claims of
Fabricius and Scheiner to the discovery of the Solar
Spots--Galileo's Letters to Velser on the claims of Scheiner--His
residence at the Villa of Salviati--Composes his work on Floating
Bodies, which involves him in new controversies,

CHAPTER IV. 56

Galileo treats his Opponents with severity and sarcasm--He is aided
by the Sceptics of the day--The Church Party the most
powerful--Galileo commences the attack, and is answered by Caccini,
a Dominican--Galileo's Letter to the Grand Duchess of Tuscany, in
support of the motion of the Earth and the stability of the
Sun--Galileo visits Rome--Is summoned before the I