“Neither breath of Morn, when she ascends
With charm of earliest birds, nor rising sun
On this delightful land, nor herb, fruit, flower
Glistering with dew, nor fragrance after showers,
Nor grateful evening mild, . . . is sweet.”

No more shall he gaze on features that he loves, or stars, or trees, or hills.  No more to him

                               “Returns
     Day, or the sweet approach of even or morn,
     Or sight of vernal bloom, or summer’s rose,
     Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine;
     But clouds, instead, and ever-during dark
     Surround” [him].

It was in those dreary desolate days at Arceti,

“Unseen
In manly beauty Milton stood before him,
Gazing in reverent awe,—­Milton, his guest,
Just then come forth, all life and enterprise;
While he in his old age, . . .
. . . exploring with his staff,
His eyes upturned as to the golden sun,
His eyeballs idly rolling.”

This may have been the punishment of his recantation,—­not Inquisitorial torture, but the consciousness that he had lost his honor.  Poor Galileo! thine illustrious visitor, when his affliction came, could cast his sightless eyeballs inward, and see and tell “things attempted yet in prose or rhyme,”—­not

    “Rocks, caves, lakes, bogs, fens, and shades of death,
        . . . . . . . . 
    “Where all life dies, death lives, and Nature breeds
        . . . . . . . . 
    “Gorgons, and Hydras, and Chimeras dire,”

but of “eternal Providence,” and “Eden with surpassing glory crowned,” and “our first parents,” and of “salvation,” “goodness infinite,” of “wisdom,” which when known we need no higher though all the stars we know by name,—­

    “All secrets of the deep, all Nature’s works,
     Or works of God in heaven, or air, or sea.”

And yet, thou stricken observer of the heavenly bodies! hadst thou but known what marvels would be revealed by the power of thy wondrous instrument after thou should’st be laid lifeless and cold beneath the marble floor of Sante Croce, at the age of seventy-eight, without a monument (although blessed on his death-bed by Pope Urban), having died a prisoner of the Inquisition, yet not without having rendered to astronomical science services of utmost value,—­even thou might have died rejoicing, as one of the great benefactors of the world.  And thy discoveries shall be forever held in gratitude; they shall herald others of even greater importance.  Newton shall prove that the different planets are attracted to the sun in the inverse ratio of the squares of their distances; that the earth has a force on the moon identical with the force of gravity, and that all celestial bodies, to the utmost boundaries of space, mutually attract