But science, discarded by the schools, fortunately finds a refuge among princes.  Cosimo de’ Medici prefers the testimony of his senses to the voice of authority.  He observes the new satellites with Galileo at Pisa, makes him a present of one thousand florins, and gives him a mere nominal office,—­that of lecturing occasionally to princes, on a salary of one thousand florins for life.  He is now the chosen companion of the great, and the admiration of Italy.  He has rendered an immense service to astronomy.  “His discovery of the satellites of Jupiter,” says Herschel, “gave the holding turn to the opinion of mankind respecting the Copernican system, and pointed out a connection between speculative astronomy and practical utility.”

But this did not complete the catalogue of his discoveries.  In 1610 he perceived that Saturn appeared to be triple, and excited the curiosity of astronomers by the publication of his first “Enigma,” Altissimam planetam tergeminam observavi.  He could not then perceive the rings; the planet seemed through his telescope to have the form of three concentric O’s.  Soon after, in examining Venus, he saw her in the form of a crescent:  Cynthiae figuras aemulatur mater amorum, “Venus rivals the phases of the moon.”

At last he discovers the spots upon the sun’s disk, and that they all revolve with the sun, and therefore that the sun has a revolution in about twenty-eight days, and may be moving on in a larger circle, with all its attendant planets, around some distant centre.

Galileo has now attained the highest object of his ambition.  He is at the head, confessedly, of all the scientific men of Europe.  He has an ample revenue; he is independent, and has perfect leisure.  Even the Pope is gracious to him when he makes a visit to Rome; while cardinals, princes, and ambassadors rival one another in bestowing upon him attention and honors.

But there is no height of fortune from which a man may not fall; and it is usually the proud, the ostentatious, and the contemptuous who do fall, since they create envy, and are apt to make social mistakes.  Galileo continued to exasperate his enemies by his arrogance and sarcasms.  “They refused to be dragged at his chariot-wheels.”  “The Aristotelian professors,” says Brewster, “the temporizing Jesuits, the political churchmen, and that timid but respectable body who at all times dread innovation, whether it be in legislation or science, entered into an alliance against the philosophical tyrant who threatened them with the penalties of knowledge.”  The church dignitaries were especially hostile, since they thought the tendency of Galileo’s investigations was to undermine the Bible.  Flanked by the logic of the schools and the popular interpretation of Scripture, and backed by the civil power, they were eager for war.  Galileo wrote a letter to his friend the Abbe Castelli, the object of which was “to prove that the Scriptures were not intended to teach science