It is supposed that in the very dawn of science, Pythagoras or his disciples explained the apparent motion of the heavenly bodies about the earth by the diurnal revolution of the earth on its axis.  But this theory, though bearing so deeply impressed upon it the great seal of truth, simplicity, was in such glaring contrast with the evidence of the senses, that it failed of acceptance in antiquity or the middle ages.  It found no favor with minds like those of Aristotle, Archimedes, Hipparchus, Ptolemy, or any of the acute and learned Arabian or mediaeval astronomers.  All their ingenuity and all their mathematical skill were exhausted in the development of a wonderfully complicated and ingenious, but erroneous history.  The great master truth, rejected for its simplicity, lay disregarded at their feet.

At the second dawn of science, the great fact again beamed into the mind of Copernicus.  Now, at least, in that glorious age which witnessed the invention of printing, the great mechanical engine of intellectual progress, and the discovery of America, we may expect that this long-hidden revelation, a second time proclaimed, will command the assent of mankind.  But the sensible phenomena were still too strong for the theory; the glorious delusion of the rising and the setting sun could not be overcome.  Tycho de Brahe furnished his Observatory with instruments superior in number and quality to all that had been collected before; but the great instrument of discovery, which, by augmenting the optic power of the eye, enables it to penetrate beyond the apparent phenomena, and to discern the true constitution of the heavenly bodies, was wanting at Uranienburg.  The observations of Tycho as discussed by Kepler, conducted that most fervid, powerful, and sagacious mind to the discovery of some of the most important laws of the celestial motions; but it was not till Galileo, at Florence, had pointed his telescope to the sky, that the Copernican system could be said to be firmly established in the scientific world.

THE HOME OF GALILEO.

On this great name, my Friends, assembled as we are to dedicate a temple to instrumental Astronomy, we may well pause for a moment.

There is much, in every way, in the city of Florence to excite the curiosity, to kindle the imagination, and to gratify the taste.  Sheltered on the north by the vine-clad hills of Fiesoli, whose cyclopean walls carry back the antiquary to ages before the Roman, before the Etruscan power, the flowery city (Fiorenza) covers the sunny banks of the Arno with its stately palaces.  Dark and frowning piles of mediaeval structure; a majestic dome, the prototype of St. Peter’s; basilicas which enshrine the ashes of some of the mightiest of the dead; the stone where Dante stood to gaze on the Campanile; the house of Michael Angelo, still occupied by a descendant of his lineage and name, his hammer, his chisel, his dividers, his manuscript poems, all as if he had left them but yesterday; airy