d
to accept another professorship, to which he had been previously
invited.

The chair of mathematics in the university of Padua having been vacant
for five years, the republic of Venice had resolved to fill it up; and,
on the recommendation of Guido Ubaldi, Galileo was appointed to it, in
1592, for a period of six years.

Previous to this event, Galileo had lost his father, who died, in 1591,
at an advanced age. As he was the eldest son, the support of the family
naturally devolved upon him; and this sacred obligation must have
increased his anxiety to better his circumstances, and therefore added
to his other inducements to quit Pisa. In September 1592, he removed to
Padua, where he had a salary of only 180 florins, and where he was again
obliged to add to his income by the labours of tuition. Notwithstanding
this fruitless occupation of his time, he appears to have found leisure
for composing several of his works, and completing various inventions,
which will be afterwards described. His manuscripts were circulated
privately among his friends and pupils; but some of them strayed beyond
this sacred limit, and found their way into the hands of persons, who
did not scruple to claim and publish, as their own, the discoveries and
inventions which they contained.

It is not easy to ascertain the exact time when Galileo became a convert
to the doctrines of Copernicus, or the particular circumstances under
which he was led to adopt them. It is stated by Gerard Voss, that a
public lecture of Moestlin, the instructor of Kepler, was the means of
making Galileo acquainted with the true system of the universe. This
assertion, however, is by no means probable; and it has been ably shown,
by the latest biographer of Galileo,[5] that, in his dialogues on the
Copernican system, our author gives the true account of his own
conversion. This passage is so interesting, that we shall give it
entire.

[5] Life of Galileo, in Library of Useful Knowledge, p. 9.

"I cannot omit this opportunity of relating to you what happened to
myself at the time when this opinion (the Copernican system) began to be
discussed. I was then a very young man, and had scarcely finished my
course of philosophy, which other occupations obliged me to leave off,
when there arrived in this country, from Rostoch, a foreigner, whose
name, I believe, was Christian Vurstisius (Wurteisen), a follower of
Copernicus. This person delivered, on this subject, two or