finding many of the thorns trampled away by the pioneer, and the road made plain, though often difficult to follow or to widen. To that extent Galileo's sufferings must have hastened the triumph of Copernicanism. This triumph was inevitable in any case, just as practically all the things for which the Chartists rose in riot, have since been peacefully enacted.
The enduring fame of Galileo, who now ranks among the greatest of Italians and of philosophers, is emphasised not only by monuments and inscriptions but by a national edition of his works in twenty volumes, and by the celebration of such epochs as the tercentenary of his birth, held at Pisa in 1864, and that of his inaugural lecture at Padua, which representative scientists of the world attended at Padua in 1892.
We will conclude with an extract from Professor Grant's appreciation of Galileo's services to the science of motion. He says: "The sagacity and skill which Galileo displays in resolving the phenomena of motion into their constituent elements, and hence deriving the original principles involved in them, will ever assure to him a distinguished place among those who have extended the domains of science. It is perhaps impossible, in the present advanced state of mechanical philosophy, to form a just estimate of the difficulties which then interposed towards a precise and luminous view of the fundamental principles of motion. It is universally admitted that those phenomena which come under the daily observation of mankind, and which on that account do not possess any salient features on which the imagination can repose, are generally those which are most liable to elude the inquiries of ordinary minds. The principles which Galileo established by his sagacious researches had the effect of elevating mechanical science to the dignity of one of the most important subjects which can concern
