Chapter X: Part 10

The Commons entreated her, with all humility, that she would make choice of a husband to share with her the weight of government, a request which they hoped, from her sex and age, would not be displeasing or offensive. To this Elizabeth replied, that as their application was expressed in general terms, merely recommending marriage, without pretending to direct her choice, she could not be offended or regard their wishes otherwise than as a new instance of their attachment toward her; but that any farther interposition respecting this subject, on their part, it would ill become them as subjects to make, or her, as an independent princess, to endure. England was the husband which she had betrothed to her; Englishmen were her children; while employed in rearing and governing such a family, she could not deem herself sterile or her life useless. She desired, for her own part, no higher character, nor fairer remembrance of her to be transmitted to posterity, than to have this inscription, when she should pay the debt of nature, engraven on her tomb: "Here lies Queen Elizabeth, who lived and died a maiden queen."

Misfortune threw the Queen of Scots into the power of Elizabeth, and she was denied those services to which the unfortunate are entitled. Driven beyond endurance, she openly and bitterly defied her more fortunate rival, who viewed her with jealousy as heir to the crown, and was fearful that her beauty and influence might supplant her own popularity. Mary was kept in prison eighteen years and then executed on the scaffold. This transaction will ever remain a foul blot on the character of Elizabeth.

Neither the cares of government nor the infirmities of approaching age weaned her from the love of letters, which at every interval of leisure were her great delight. When nearly sixty years of age, in 1592, she made a second visit to Oxford, where, having been entertained with orations, disputations, etc., she pronounced on her departure, a Latin oration to the vice-chancellors and doctors, when she took her last farewell of the university. In the ensuing year she translated from Latin into English, Boethius's "De Consolatione Philosophae." In 1598, when the disturbances in Ireland occupied a considerable share of her attention, she translated Sallust's "De bello Jugurthino," also the greater part of Horace's "De Arte Poetica," and Plutarch's book, "De Curiositate," all of which were written in her own hand.

But Elizabeth no longer took an interest in public concerns; her sun was setting, overshadowed by a dark cloud. Prosperity and glory palled upon her sense; an incurable melancholy had fixed itself on her heart. The anxiety of her mind made swift ravages upon her feeble frame; the period of her life visibly approached. The Archbishop of Canterbury advised her to fix her thoughts on God. She did so, she replied, nor did her mind in the least wander from Him. Her voice and her senses soon after failing, she fell into a lethargic slumber, which having continued some hours, she expired gently, without a struggle, March 24, 1603, in the seventieth year of her age and the forty-fifth of her reign.

The character of Elizabeth appears to have been exalted by her friends and depreciated by her enemies, in nearly equal proportions. As a monarch, her activity and force of mind, her magnanimity, sagacity, prudence, vigilance, and address, have scarcely been surpassed in royal annals, and are worthy of the highest admiration. Pope Sixtus V. spoke of her on all occasions as "a woman with a strong head," and gave her a place among the three persons who only, in his opinion, deserved to reign; the remaining two were himself and Henry IV. of France. "Your queen," said he once to an Englishman, "is born fortunate; she governs her kingdom with great happiness; she wants only to be married to me to give the world a second Alexander."

Her temper and her talents equally fitted her for government. Capable of self-command, and of controlling her own passions, she acquired an unlimited ascendency over those of her people. She possessed courage without temerity; spirit, resource, and activity in war, with the love of peace and tranquillity. Her frugality was exempt from avarice, it was the result rather of her love of independence than a passion for accumulation. She never amassed any treasures. Her friendships were uniform and steady, yet she was never governed by her favorites--a criterion of a strong mind. Her choice in her ministers gave proof of her sagacity, as her constancy in supporting them did of her firmness. If a conduct less rigorous, less imperious, and more indulgent would have thrown greater lustre over her character, let it be remembered that some good qualities appear to be incompatible with others; nor let the seductive and corrupting nature of power be left out in the account. Her insincerity was perhaps the greatest blot in her character and the fruitful source of all the vexatious incidents of her reign. Though unacquainted with philosophical toleration, the only method of disarming the turbulence of religious factions, she yet preserved her people, by her prudence and good sense, from those theological disputes which desolated the neighboring nations.

Beset with enemies, both at home and abroad, among the most powerful princes in Europe, the most enterprising and the least scrupulous, the vigor of her administration enabled her to defeat all their purposes, to annoy and plunder them in their own dominions, and to preserve her own dignity untouched and unimpaired. Few monarchs have succeeded to a throne in more difficult circumstances, nor have any ever reigned with more uniform success and prosperity.

If, as a woman, cut off by the peculiarities of her situation from the sympathies of nature and the charm of equal affections, Elizabeth, at times suffered under these privations, which even gave to her sensibility additional force and acuteness, the strength of her reason still triumphed over her passions, and the struggle which her victories cost her served but to display the firmness of her resolution and the loftiness of her mind.

The praises which have by some been bestowed upon Elizabeth for her regard for the constitution and tender concern for the liberties of the people, are wholly without foundation. Few princes have exerted with more arbitrary power the regal prerogatives which had been transmitted to her by her immediate predecessors; yet no censure belongs to her for this conduct, in the principles of which she had been trained and of the justice of which she was persuaded. What potentate, what man, has voluntarily resigned the power in which those beneath him quietly acquiesced? Compared with the reigns of her father and sister, that of Elizabeth might be termed a golden age.

FRANCIS BACON[14]

By HON. IGNATIUS DONNELLY

(1561-1626)

[Footnote 14: Copyright, 1894, by Selmar Hess.]

Francis Bacon was born in York House, London, on January 22, 1561. Of this building only the ancient water-gate, fronting the Thames, survives the waste of time. His father, Sir Nicholas Bacon, was for twenty years Lord Keeper of the Great Seal under Elizabeth--a famous statesman, orator, and wit. His mother, Lady Ann Bacon, was the second daughter of the celebrated Sir Anthony Cooke, formerly tutor of King Edward VI., Henry VIII.'s short-lived son. She was a woman of great learning and many accomplishments, and of a strong, earnest, passionate, affectionate, and religious nature.

Francis was the youngest of eight children, six of whom were by the first wife of Sir Nicholas. He belonged to the aristocracy of England, but not to that ancient, warlike race of battle-crowned warriors, whose pedigree dated back beyond the Crusades. His father was a lawyer. Both his father's family and his mother's seem to have risen from the ranks on the great wave of the Reformation; they belonged to the intellectual new age, then dawning; rather than to the rude, fighting age which was about to pass away. Francis was no accident. We can see in him the two natures of his father and his mother--the commingling of the powerful, practical, sagacious politician and man of affairs, with the studious, contemplative, imaginative, affectionate, religious enthusiast.

His birthplace was a palace; the country seat of Gorhamsbury, near Saint Albans' village, is in the midst of the most charming rural scenery in England, or in the world. There a great part of his youth and early manhood was passed.

]

He came into this breathing world when the human race were upon the threshold of the tremendous development which now surrounds us. He was born sixty-nine years after Columbus had re-opened the long-closed pathway from the eastern to the western shores of the Atlantic Ocean; twenty-seven years after the French took possession of Canada; twelve years after the Portuguese settled in Brazil; and forty-six years before the first English colonists landed at Jamestown, Va. The degree of advancement of the mind of the age will be understood when it is remembered that it was only one hundred and twenty-five years, at the date of Bacon's birth, since Guttenberg had invented movable types, in Germany; and but eighty-seven years since Caxton set up his printing press at Westminster. No man has ever lived who did more than Bacon to change the opinions and condition of those who came after him.

It was a "day of little things." England contained less than five million inhabitants, and of these probably not one-tenth spoke a language which could be understood to-day by the English-using people of the world. The mass of the populace were steeped to the lips in brutality and ignorance. The houses of the peasants were built of "sticks and dirt;" many of them "without chimneys or glazed windows;" the habits of the people were "inconceivably filthy;" "scurvy and leprosy were endemic;" the schools did not, as a rule, teach English; the amusements of the populace were bear-baitings and dancing naked in barns; the people of one county could not understand the speech of the inhabitants of the next county; "the disputes about tithes and boundaries were usually settled by bands of armed men, and the records of the Star-Chamber swarm with such cases." Education was at a low ebb. "In one year, 1570 (Bacon was then nine years of age), the scholars of Trinity College, Cambridge, consumed 2,250 barrels of beer." Many of the graduates became beggars; and so extensive was this evil that Parliament, by an act of 14th Elizabeth, declared that "all scholars of the Universities of Oxford or Cambridge that go about begging, not being authorized under the seal of the said universities," are declared "vagabonds" and punished as such. But even this was an improvement on Henry VIII.'s time when three hundred men were hanged in London for soliciting alms.

The only illuminated spot in all this darkness was the Court in London. Here they talked something which we would to-day call English; here they caught, through France and Italy, a reflected light from the dying glories of the ancient Roman civilization; here the travelled wealthy, "the picked men of countries," brought home some of the culture of more refined races. Bacon says:

"Courts are but only superficial schools
To dandle fools;
The rural parts are turned into a den
Of savage men;
And where's the city, from foul vice so free,
But may be termed the worst of all the three?"

In this curious, primitive, rude, ensmalled age, grew up the great man who was to do so much to change it all.

From his early years he manifested that vastly active intellect "which knew no rest save in motion." He studied, as a child, the nature of echoes in a tunnel. At fifteen years of age (so his chaplain Rawley and his biographer Spedding assure us), he had realized the shallowness of the Aristotelian philosophy and had thought out those principles which have since revolutionized human society. There are reasons to believe that he was the child of fifteen, referred to by the Rosicrucians, who planned the foundation of their society, and, at that early age, wrote the "Chymical Marriage of Christian Rosencreutz," first published in 1616.

At about twelve years of age he went to Cambridge--to Trinity College--rooming with his brother Anthony, who was two years his senior. In June, 1576, he left the university and became an _ancient_ of the Gray's Inn law-society. On September 25, 1576, he accompanied Sir Amias Paulet, the English ambassador, to France. Here he witnessed the sixth civil war of the French people. He followed the court through several of the French provinces; he resided for three months at Poitiers. About February 17, 1579, he dreamed that his father's house in the country was all covered over with black mortar. At the same time his father was taken sick and died in three days thereafter. He returned home on March 20, 1579, to find himself poor. As he said, he could not "live to study," but had "to study to live." He became a practising lawyer, but he did not like the profession. He feared "the bar would be his bier;" it absorbed time which he thought should be dedicated to better ends. We think we find the expression of his heart in the lines of the so-called Shakespeare Sonnet:

"O, for my sake, do thou with fortune chide,
The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds,
That did not better for my life provide,
Than public means, which public manners breeds."

His pecuniary embarrassments were numerous, and continuous. Falstaff doubtless expresses a thought which often recurred to him: "I can get no remedy against this consumption of the purse; borrowing only lingers and lingers it out, but the disease is incurable." More than once he was thrown into a "sponging-house" for debt. His brother Anthony loaned him money repeatedly. In 1592 a "hard Jew or Lombard" put him in confinement for a debt on a bond. Anthony mortgaged his property to pay his debts. In 1594 Malone believes the play of "The Merchant of Venice" was in existence, in which Bassanio, being in debt to a hard Jew, his friend, Antonius, mortgages his own flesh to help him out of his troubles; and the Jew money-lender is sent down through all the ages the terrible type and exemplar of the merciless usurer. Bacon continues a "briefless barrister," with much time at his disposal. He helps in the composition of the play called "The Misfortunes of Arthur." He writes a Sonnet to the Queen. About this time, 1592, the Shakespeare plays begin to appear. Bacon assists in the preparation of several "masks" and "revels," gotten up by Gray's Inn. "The Comedy of Errors" first appears in the hall of that society, which still stands in London. The "Venus and Adonis" and "Lucrece" appear, dedicated to Bacon's intimate friend, Lord Southampton; and that nobleman in 1594 contributes a large sum to the construction of the _Globe_ play-house, Bacon having observed that the stage is a powerful instrumentality to "play on the minds" of the people; and on this stage a series of historical plays are put forth, everyone of which represents kings as monsters or imbeciles.

The Shakespeare plays continue to be poured forth, and Bacon suffers from a siege of "Jews and duns." He describes himself "as poor and sick, working for bread." "I am purposed," he says, "not to follow the practice of the law." "It is easier," says Mr. Spedding, Bacon's biographer, "to understand why Bacon was resolved not to devote his life to the ordinary practice of a lawyer, than what plan he had to clear himself of the difficulties which were now accumulating upon him, and to obtain the means of living and working. What course he betook himself to at the crisis at which we have now arrived, I cannot possibly say." We have here the time, the opportunity, the incentive, and the necessity for the composition of the Shakespeare plays; part of the fruits of the representation of which made Shakespeare very wealthy.

In January, 1597, the first acknowledged work of Bacon--his "Essays"--was published. They were ten in number. Bacon said of them he hoped they would be "like the late new half-pence, which, though the pieces are small, the silver is good."

Until he was forty-four years of age, Bacon was kept poor and out of office by his uncle Burleigh, and his cousin Cecil; during the life-time of Queen Elizabeth he was steadily passed over and suppressed; and even during the first years of the reign of King James I., the influence of Cecil, then the Earl of Salisbury, was sufficient to keep him out of office. In 1605, Bacon published his first great philosophical work, "The Advancement of Learning;" in 1607, he became Solicitor-General; and in 1612, Attorney-General, and member of the Privy Council. He was then fifty-one years of age, and Shakespeare forty-eight. After the appointment of Bacon as Attorney-General, no more of the Shakespeare plays appeared; the "Tempest," which is evidently the last of the series, for in it Prospero declares--

"I'll break my staff,
Bury it certain fathoms in the earth,
And deeper than did ever plummet sound,
I'll drown my book;"

is set down by the commentators, as written between 1609 and 1611. At that time Shakespeare was forty-five or forty-seven years of age, and lived for five or seven years thereafter in utter intellectual idleness, in Stratford.

In 1609 Bacon published "The Wisdom of the Ancients," a prose work of great poetical beauty. His professional practice was large and his income princely. In 1617 he succeeded Ellesmere, the Lord Chancellor, with the title of lord-keeper. In January, 1618, he was created lord high chancellor, and the same year was raised to the peerage as Baron of Verulam; and in 1621 he was made Viscount St. Albans. The "Novum Organum," his great life-work, was printed in October, 1620. His extraordinary industry is revealed in the fact that it had been copied and revised twelve times before it took its present shape. The new philosophy meant the study of nature and the acquisition of the knowledge of things. In this search the "most common," "base, illiberal and filthy matters," are not to be overlooked. We find in the plays the same novel philosophy:

"Some kinds of baseness
Are nobly undergone; and most poor matters
Point to rich ends." (Tempest, iii. 1.)

"Bacon's leading thought was the good of humanity. He held that study, instead of employing itself in wearisome and sterile speculations, should be engaged in mastering the secrets of nature and life, and in applying them to human use. His method, in the attainment of this end, was rigid and pure observation, aided by experiment and fructified by induction.... He clearly invented a thermometer; he instituted ingenious experiments on the compressibility of bodies, and on the density and weight of air; he suggested chemical processes; he suggested the law of universal gravitation, afterward demonstrated by Newton; he foresaw the true explication of the tides, and the cause of colors." ["American Cyclopedia." Vol. II., p. 204.]

This great work, the "Novum Organum," as often happens, was received by the majority of readers of his time with laughter and ridicule. Coke wrote on the title-page of a presentation copy:

"It deserveth not to be read in schools,
But to be freighted in the ship of fools."

The ill-fortune which had so shrouded Bacon's struggling youth, and which had given way to such a magnificent sun-burst of splendid prosperity, was again massing its clouds and determined to cover his old age with shame, gloom and sorrow. He had been Lord Chancellor but three years, when, on March 15, 1621, a committee of the House of Commons reported two cases of bribery or corruption against him. Twenty-two other cases were also soon after presented. The House of Lords proceeded to investigate these charges, and Bacon defended himself. It was shown that fourteen of the twenty-four cases were presents given long after the suits were terminated; three more were sums of money loaned in the ordinary course of business; another case was an arbitration where compensation was due him; in another case the gift was sent back; another present, a piece of furniture, had never been accepted; another case was a New Year's gift, and in other cases the money was openly paid to the officers of his court. "Thus," says Hepworth Dixon, "after the most rigid scrutiny into his official acts, and into the official acts of his servants, not a single fee or remembrance, traced to the chancellor, can, by any fair construction, be called a bribe. Not one appears to have been given on a promise; not one appears to have been given in secret; not one is alleged to have corrupted justice."

It must be remembered that the salaries of all the high officers of the government were at that time paid in gifts and fees. Thus the king gave the lord chancellor but L81 6_s._ 8_d._ a year, while the place was worth L10,000 to L15,000; worth in our money to-day $125,000. "The judges had enough to buy their gloves and robes, not more." The lord chancellor had to maintain a huge retinue: "his court, his household, and his followers, gentlemen of quality, sons of peers and prelates; magistrates, deputy lieutenants of counties, knights of the shire, have all to live on fees and presents." It is still true that in England the law will not help a barrister or a physician to recover a fee; their compensation is, in theory, at least, supposed to be a gratuity for those they serve.

But it may be urged that Bacon plead guilty to corruption and bribery. He did nothing of the kind. He acknowledged that he "partook of the abuses of the times," and that the existing customs should be reformed; but he solemnly declared to Buckingham, May 31, 1621: "I have been a trusty and honest and Christ-loving friend to your lordship and the justest chancellor that hath been in the five charges since my father's time." Again, he said: "I had no bribe or reward in my eye or thought when I pronounced any sentence or order.... I take myself to be as innocent as any babe born on St. Innocent's day in my heart." All attempts to subsequently reverse his decrees failed, although his enemies were in possession of power. But King James urged him to make no defence, "to trust his honor and his safety to the crown.... He pleads guilty to carelessness, not to crime." He desired to live to finish up his philosophical works. To resist the king's wishes was to leave himself at the mercy of his life-long enemy, Coke; he yielded. The king remitted his fine of L40,000 and released him from the Tower. Bacon goes back to his books and writes in cipher: "I was the justest judge that was in England these fifty years; but it was the justest censure that was in Parliament these two hundred years." He meant thereby, that while personally innocent of corruption, the sentence would end gift-giving to judges. His formal confession to Parliament is a justification of every act complained of, for he relieves it, while acknowledging it, of those details which imply bribery.

He devoted the last five years of his life to putting forth the greatest works ever published by man; including the first complete edition of the so-called Shakespeare plays. Fortunate is it for the world that he was driven from the task of settling petty squabbles about the trash of the time, listening to "weary lawyers with endless tongues;" adjudicating questions of pounds, shillings, and pence between litigants whose very names have disappeared; and was shipwrecked by the stress of the great storm that struck him, like _Prospero_, on an island of solicitude, with books that "he prized above his dukedom," to perform labors in which all mankind will be interested even to the consummation of civilization on earth.

His patience, his gentleness, his forbearance were saint-like; still in his right hand he carried "gentle peace to silence envious tongues." His appearance, we are told, struck all men who beheld him with a great sense of awe. Those who were most closely associated with him loved him most dearly. His purposes were Godlike. They were "the glory of the Creator and the relief of man's estate." Macaulay says of Bacon's experimental philosophy:

"It has lengthened life; it has mitigated pain; it has extinguished diseases; it has increased the fertility of the soil; it has given new securities to the mariner; it has furnished new arms to the warrior; it has spanned great rivers and estuaries with bridges of form unknown to our fathers; it has guided the thunderbolt innocuously from heaven to earth; it has lighted up the night with the splendor of the day; it has extended the range of the human vision; it has multiplied the power of human muscle; it has accelerated motion; it has annihilated distance; it has facilitated intercourse, correspondence, all friendly offices, all despatch of business; it has enabled men to descend to the depths of the sea; to soar into the air; to penetrate securely into the noxious recesses of the earth; to traverse the land with cars which whirl along without horses; and the ocean with ships which sail against the wind."

In other words, the brain of this tremendous, this incomprehensible, this complex man, lies at the base of all our literature and of all our modern progress and civilization. The world is hardly big enough for his fame, and the praises of mankind cannot fill the measure of his greatness.

[Signature of the author.]

GALILEO-GALILEI

(1564-1642)

]

The great Tuscan astronomer is best known as the first telescopic observer, the fortunate discoverer of the Medicean stars (so Jupiter's satellites were first named); and what discovery more fitted to immortalize its author than one which revealed new worlds and thus gave additional force to the lesson, that the universe, of which we form so small a part, was not created only for our use or pleasure? Those, however, who consider Galileo only as a fortunate observer, form a very inadequate estimate of one of the most meritorious and successful of those great men who have bestowed their time for the advantage of mankind in tracing out the hidden things of nature. Galileo-Galilei was born at Pisa, February 15, 1564. In childhood he displayed considerable mechanical ingenuity, with a decided taste for the accomplishments of music and painting. His father formed a just estimate of his talents, and at some inconvenience entered him, when nineteen years old, at the university of his native town, intending that he should pursue the medical profession. Galileo was then entirely ignorant of mathematics; and he was led to the study of geometry by a desire thoroughly to understand the principles of his favorite arts. This new pursuit proved so congenial to his taste, that from thenceforward his medical books were entirely neglected. The elder Galilei, a man of liberal acquirements and enlarged mind, did not require the devotion of his son's life to a distasteful pursuit. Fortunately the young man's talents attracted notice, and in 1589 he was appointed mathematical lecturer in the University of Pisa. There is reason to believe that, at an early period of his studentship, he embraced, upon inquiry and conviction, the doctrines of Copernicus, of which through life he was an ardent supporter.

Galileo and his colleagues did not long remain on good terms. The latter were content with the superstructure which _a priori_ reasoners had raised upon Aristotle, and were by no means desirous of the trouble of learning more. Galileo chose to investigate physical truths for himself; he engaged in experiments to determine the truth of some of Aristotle's positions, and when he found him in the wrong, he said so, and so taught his pupils. This made the "paper philosophers," as he calls them, very angry. He repeated his experiments in their presence, but they set aside the evidence of their senses and quoted Aristotle as much as before. The enmity arising from these disputes rendered his situation so unpleasant, that in 1592, at the invitation of the Venetian commonwealth, he gladly accepted the professorship of mathematics at Padua. The period of his appointment being only six years, he was re-elected in 1598, and again in 1606, each time with an increase of salary; a strong proof of the esteem in which he was held, even before those astronomical discoveries which have immortalized his name. His lectures at this period were so fully attended that he was sometimes obliged to adjourn them to the open air. In 1609 he received an invitation to return to his original situation at Pisa. This produced a letter, still extant, from which we quote a catalogue of the undertakings on which he was already employed. "The works which I have to finish are principally two books on the 'System or Structure of the Universe,' an immense work, full of philosophy, astronomy, and geometry; three books on 'Local Motion,' a science entirely new, no one, either ancient or modern, having discovered any of the very many admirable accidents which I demonstrate in natural and violent motions, so that I may, with very great reason, call it a new science, and invented by me from its very first principles; three books of mechanics, two on the demonstration of principles and one of problems; and although others have treated this same matter, yet all that has been hitherto written, neither in quantity nor otherwise, is the quarter of what I am writing on it. I have also different treatises on natural subjects--on Sound and Speech, on Light and Colors, on the Tides, on the Composition of Continuous Quantity, on the Motions of Animals, and others besides. I have also an idea of writing some books relating to the military art, giving not only a model of a soldier, but teaching with very exact rules everything which it is his duty to know, that depends upon mathematics, as the knowledge of castrametation, drawing up of battalions, fortification, assaults, planning, surveying, the knowledge of artillery, the use of instruments, etc." Out of this comprehensive list, the treatises on the universe, on motion and mechanics, on tides, on fortification, or other works upon the same subjects, have been made known to the world. Many, however, of Galileo's manuscripts, through fear of the Inquisition, were destroyed, or concealed and lost, after the author's death.

In the same year, 1609, Galileo heard the report that a spectacle-maker of Middleburg, in Holland, had made an instrument by which distant objects appeared nearer. He tasked his ingenuity to discover the construction, and soon succeeded in manufacturing a telescope. His telescope, however, seems to have been made on a different construction from that of the Dutch optician. It consisted of a convex and concave glass, distant from each other by the difference of their focal lengths, like a modern opera-glass; while there is reason to believe that the other was made up of two convex lenses, distant by the sum of their focal lengths, the common construction of the astronomical telescope. Galileo's attention naturally was first turned to the moon. He discovered that her surface, instead of being smooth and perfectly spherical, was rough with mountains and apparently varied like the earth, by land and water. He next applied to Jupiter, and was struck by the appearance of three small stars, almost in a straight line and close to him. At first he did not suspect the nature of these bodies; but careful observation soon convinced him that these three, together with a fourth, which was at first invisible, were in reality four moons revolving round their primary planet. These he named the Medicean stars. They have long ceased to be known by that name; but so highly prized was the distinction thus conferred upon the ducal house of Florence, that Galileo received an intimation that he would "do a thing just and proper in itself, and at the same time render himself and his family rich and powerful forever," if he "named the next star which he should discover after the name of the great star of France, as well as the most brilliant of all the earth," Henry IV. These discoveries were made known in 1610, in a work entitled "Nuncius Sidereus," the Newsman of the Stars; in which Galileo further announced that he had seen many stars invisible to the naked eye, and ascertained that the nebulae scattered through the heavens consist of assemblages of innumerable small stars. The ignorant and unprejudiced were struck with admiration; indeed, curiosity had been raised so high before the publication of this book, as materially to interfere with the convenience of those who possessed telescopes. Galileo was employed a month in exhibiting his own to the principal persons in Venice; and our unfortunate astronomer was surrounded by a crowd who kept him in durance for several hours, while they passed his glass from one to another. He left Venice the next morning, to pursue his inquiries in some less inquisitive place. But the great bulk of the philosophers of the day were far from joining in the general feeling. They raised an outcry against the impudent fictions of Galileo, and one, a professor of Padua, refused repeatedly to look through the telescope, lest he should be compelled to admit that which he had pre-determined to deny.

It was not long before Galileo had new and equally important matter to announce. He observed a remarkable appearance in Saturn, as if it were composed of three stars touching each other; his telescope was not sufficiently powerful to resolve them into Saturn and his ring. Within a month he ascertained that Venus exhibits phases like those of the moon--a discovery of great importance in confirming the Copernican system. The same phenomenon he afterward detected in Mars. We close the list with the discovery of the revolution of the sun round his axis, in the space of about a lunar month, derived from careful observation of the spots on his surface.

About this time (1610-1611) Galileo took up his abode in Tuscany, upon the invitation of the grand duke, who offered to him his original situation at Pisa, with a liberal salary, exemption from the necessity of residence, and complete leisure to pursue his studies. In 1612 he published a discourse on "Floating Bodies," in which he investigates the theory of buoyancy, and refutes, by a series of beautiful and conclusive experiments, the opinion that the floating or sinking of bodies depends on their shape.

Neither Copernicus nor his immediate followers suffered inconvenience or restraint on account of their astronomical doctrines; nor had Galileo, until this period of his life, incurred ecclesiastical censure for anything which he had said or written. But the Inquisition now took up the matter as heretical and contrary to the express words of Scripture; and in 1616, Copernicus's work, "De Revolutionibus," Kepler's "Epitome," and some of Galileo's own letters, were placed on the list of prohibited books; and he himself, being then in Rome, received formal notice not to teach that the earth revolves round the sun. He returned to Florence full of indignation; and considering his hasty temper, love of truth, and full belief of the condemned theory, it is rather wonderful that he kept silence so long, than that he incurred at last the censures of the hierarchy. He did, however, restrain himself from any open advocacy of the heretical doctrines, even in composing his great work, the "Dialogue on the Ptolemaic and Copernican Systems." This was completed in 1630, but not printed till 1632, under license from officers of the church, both at Rome and Florence. It is a dialogue between Simplicio, an Aristotelian, Salviati, who represents the author, and Sagredo, a half convert to Salviati's opinions. It professes "indeterminately to propose the philosophical arguments, as well on one side as on the other;" but the neutrality is but ill kept up, and was probably assumed, not with any hope that the court of Rome would be blinded as to the real tendency of the book, but merely that it would accept this nominal submission as a sufficient homage to its authority. If this were so, the author was disappointed; the Inquisition took cognizance of the matter, and summoned him to Rome to undergo a personal examination. Age and infirmity were in vain pleaded as excuses; still, through the urgent and indignant remonstrances of the Grand Duke of Tuscany, he was treated with a consideration rarely shown by that stern tribunal. He was allowed to remain at the Florentine ambassador's palace, with the exception of a short period, from his arrival in February, until the passing of sentence, June 21, 1633. He was then condemned, in the presence of the Inquisitors, to curse and abjure the "false doctrines," which his life had been spent in proving, to be confined in the prison of the Holy Office during pleasure, and to recite the seven penitential psalms once a week during three years. The sentence and the abjuration are given at full length in the "Life of Galileo," in the "Library of Useful Knowledge." "It is said," continues the biographer, "that Galileo, as he rose from his knees, stamped on the ground, and whispered to one of his friends, '_e pur si muove_,' it does move though."

Galileo's imprisonment was not long or rigorous, for after four days he was reconducted to the Florentine ambassador's palace; but he was still kept under strict surveillance. In July he was sent to Sienna, where he remained five months in strict seclusion. He obtained permission in December to return to his villa at Arcetri, near Florence: but there, as at Sienna, he was confined to his own premises, and strictly forbidden to receive his friends. It is painful to contemplate the variety of evils which overcast the evening of this great man's life. In addition to a distressing chronic complaint, contracted in youth, he was now suffering under a painful infirmity which by some is said to have been produced by torture, applied in the prisons of the Inquisition to extort a recantation. But the arguments brought forward to show that the Inquisitors did resort to this extremity do not amount to anything like direct proof. In April, 1634, Galileo's afflictions were increased by the death of a favorite, intelligent, and attached daughter. He consoled his solitude, and lightened the hours of sickness, by continuing the observations which he was now forbidden to publish to the world; and the last of his long train of discoveries was the phenomenon known by the name of the moon's libration. In the course of 1636-37 he lost successively the sight of both his eyes. He mentions this calamity in a tone of pious submission, mingled with a not unpleasing pride. "Alas, your dear friend and servant Galileo has become totally and irreparably blind; so that this heaven, this earth, this universe, which with wonderful observations I had enlarged a hundred thousand times beyond the belief of by-gone ages, henceforward for me is shrunk into the narrow space which I myself fill in it. So it pleases God: it shall therefore please me also." In 1638 he obtained leave to visit Florence, still under the same restrictions as to society; but at the end of a few months he was remanded to Arcetri, which he never again quitted. From that time, however, the strictness of his confinement was relaxed, and he was allowed to receive the friends who crowded round him, as well as the many distinguished foreigners who eagerly visited him. Among these we must not forget Milton, whose poems contain several allusions to the celestial wonders observed and published by the Tuscan astronomer. Though blind and nearly deaf, Galileo retained to the last his intellectual powers; and his friend and pupil, the celebrated Torricelli, was employed in arranging his thoughts on the nature of percussion, when he was attacked by his last illness. He died January 8, 1642, aged seventy-eight.

It was disputed whether, as a prisoner of the Inquisition, Galileo had a right to burial in consecrated ground. The point was conceded; but Pope Urban VIII. himself interfered to prevent the erection of a monument to him in the church of Santa Croce, in Florence, for which a large sum had been subscribed. A splendid monument now covers the spot in which his remains repose with those of his friend and pupil, the eminent mathematician Viviani.

For an account of Galileo's application of the pendulum to the mensuration of time; his invention of the thermometer, though in an inaccurate and inconvenient form; his methods of discovering the longitude, and a variety of other points well worth attention, we must refer to the Life of Galileo already quoted. The numerous extracts from Galileo's works convey a lively notion of the author's character, and are distinguished by a peculiar tone of quaint humor. In conclusion, we quote the estimate of Galileo's character, from the same masterly memoir. "The numberless inventions of his acute industry; the use of the telescope, and the brilliant discoveries to which it led; the patient investigation of the laws of weight and motion, must all be looked upon as forming but a part of his real merits, as merely particular demonstrations of the spirit in which he everywhere withstood the despotism of ignorance, and appealed boldly from traditional opinions to the judgment of reason and common sense. He claimed and bequeathed to us the right of exercising our faculties in examining the beautiful creation which surrounds us. Idolized by his friends, he deserved their affection by numberless acts of kindness; by his good humor, his affability, and by the benevolent generosity with which he devoted himself, and a great part of his limited income, to advance their talents and fortunes. If an intense desire of being useful is everywhere worthy of honor; if its value is immeasurably increased when united to genius of the highest order; if we feel for one, who, notwithstanding such titles to regard, is harassed by cruel persecution, then none deserve our sympathy, our admiration, and our gratitude, more than Galileo."

CARDINAL RICHELIEU

(1585-1642)

]

Armand Jean Du Plessis, Duke of Richelieu, the future cardinal, was the third son of Francois Du Plessis, Grand Provost of the French Court, and was born on September 5, 1585, at Paris, say his biographers, Aubery and Leclerc; while tradition claims this honor for the family chateau in Poitou. He received the elements of education at home from the Prior of St. Florent, but soon quitted the paternal mansion, first for the College of Navarre, subsequently for that of Lisieux. From thence he removed to a military academy, being intended for the profession of arms. But on his brother, who was Bishop of Lucon, resolving to quit the world for the cloister, young Armand was advised to abandon the sword for the gown, in order that he might succeed to his brother's bishopric.

He adopted the advice, entered with zeal into the study of theology, and soon qualified himself to pass creditably through the exercises necessary to obtain the degree of doctor in theology. He already wore the insignia of his bishopric, but the Pope's sanction was still wanting, and was withheld on account of the extreme youth of the expectant. Resolved to overcome this difficulty, he set off to Rome, addressed the pontiff in a Latin oration, and gave such proofs of talent and acquirements above his age, that he was consecrated at Rome on the Easter of 1607, being as yet but twenty-two years of age.

This position attained, Richelieu endeavored to make the utmost advantage of it. He acquired the good-will of his diocese by rigid attention to the affairs that fell under his jurisdiction; while in frequent visits to the capital, he sought to acquire reputation by preaching. In the Estates General of 1614, he was chosen deputy by his diocese, and was afterward selected by the clergy of the States to present their _cahier_ or vote of grievances to the monarch. It was an opportunity not to be thrown away by the ambition of Richelieu, who instantly put himself forward as the champion of the queen-mother against the cabal of the high noblesse. He at the same time pointed out where she might find auxiliaries, by complaining that ecclesiastics had no longer a place in the public administration, and were thus degraded from their ancient and legitimate share of influence. Richelieu was rewarded with the place of almoner to the queen; and he was soon admitted to her confidence as well as to that of her favorite, the Marechal D'Ancre.

In 1616 he was appointed secretary of state; but aware by what slender tenure the office was held, he refused to give up his bishopric. This excited not only the animadversions of the public, but the anger of the favorite. Richelieu offered to give up his secretaryship, but the queen could not dispense with his talents. The assassination of the favorite, however, soon overthrew the influence of the queen herself. Still Richelieu remained attached to her, and followed her to Blois; but the triumphant party, dreading his talents for intrigue, ordered him to quit the queen and repair to one of his priories in Anjou. He was subsequently commanded to retire to his bishopric, and at last exiled to Avignon. Here he sought to avert suspicion by affecting to devote himself once more to theological pursuits. During this period he published one or two polemical tracts, the mediocrity of which proves either that his genius lay not in this path, or, as is probable, that his interest and thoughts were elsewhere.

The escape of the queen-mother from her place of confinement, excited the fears of her enemies and the hopes of Richelieu. He wrote instantly to court, to proffer his services toward bringing about an accommodation. In the difficulty of the moment, the king and his favorite accepted the offer. Richelieu was released from exile, and allowed to join the queen at Angouleme, where he certainly labored to bring about a reconciliation. There were long and bitter struggles, but an agreement was finally concluded, and it was found that Richelieu, the negotiator, had himself reaped all the benefits. He received the cardinal's hat from the king's hand at Lyons, toward the close of the year 1622.

Not content with this advancement of her counsellor, Mary de Medici continued to press the king to admit Richelieu to his cabinet. Louis long resisted her solicitations, such was his instinctive dread of the man destined to rule him. Nor was it until 1624, after the lapse of sixteen months, and when embarrassed with difficult state questions, which no one then in office was capable of managing, that the royal will was declared admitting Richelieu to the council. Even this grace was accompanied by the drawback that the cardinal was allowed to give merely his opinion, not his vote.

Once, however, seated at the council table, the colleagues of the cardinal shrunk before him into ciphers. He boldly avowed his determination to adopt the policy and resume the scheme of Henry IV., for the humiliation of the House of Austria. His anchor of safety was in the confidence reposed in him by Louis XIII. This prince, although of most feeble will, was not without the just pride of a monarch; he could not but perceive that his former ministers or favorites were but the instruments or slaves of the noblesse, who consulted but their own interests, and provided but for the difficulties of the moment. Richelieu, on the contrary, though eager for power, sought it as an instrument to great ends, to the consolidation of the monarchy, and to its ascendancy in Europe. He was in the habit of unfolding these high views to Louis, who, though himself incapable of putting them into effect, nevertheless had the spirit to admire and approve them. Richelieu proposed to render his reign illustrious abroad, and at home to convert the chief of a turbulent aristocracy into a real monarch. It forms indeed the noblest part of this great statesman's character, that he won upon the royal mind, not by vulgar flattery, but by exciting within it a love of glory and of greatness to which, at the same time, he pointed the way.

Accordingly, through all the plots formed against him, Louis XIII. remained firmly attached to Richelieu, sacrificing to this minister's pre-eminence his nobility, his brother Gaston, Duke of Orleans, his queen, and finally the queen-mother herself, when she too became jealous of the man whom she had raised.

If Richelieu thus imprudently indulged his passion or his pique, he redeemed the error by activity and exertion unusual to the age. He at once formed the project of attacking the Huguenots in their chief stronghold of La Rochelle. Buckingham, the English minister, could not fail to attempt the relief of this sea-port, and the cardinal anticipated the triumph of personally defeating a rival. He accordingly himself proceeded to preside over the operations of the siege. To render the blockade effectual, it was requisite to stop up the port. The military officers whom he employed could suggest no means of doing this. Richelieu took counsel of his classic reading, and having learned from Quintus Curtius how Alexander the Great reduced Tyre, by carrying out a mole against it through the sea, he was encouraged to undertake a similar work. The great mound was accordingly commenced, and well-nigh finished, when a storm arose and destroyed it in a single night. But Richelieu was only rendered more obstinate: he recommenced the mole, and was seen with the volume of Alexander's History in his hand, encouraging the workmen and overruling the objections of the tacticians of the army. The second attempt succeeded, the harbor was blocked up, and the promised aid of England rendered fruitless. The cardinal triumphed, for La Rochelle surrendered. In his treatment of the vanquished, Richelieu showed a moderation seldom observable in his conduct. He was lenient, and even tolerant, toward the Huguenots, content with having humbled the pride of his rival, Buckingham.

La Rochelle was no sooner taken, and Richelieu rewarded by the title of prime minister than he resumed those projects of humbling the House of Austria, in which he had previously been interrupted. A quarrel about the succession to Mantua afforded him a pretext to interfere; and he did so, after his fashion, not by mere negotiations, but by an army. This expedition proved a source of quarrel between him and the queen-mother, Mary de Medici, who hitherto had been his firm and efficient friend.

The voice of the conqueror of La Rochelle triumphed in council, and his project in the field. The French were victorious in Italy, and the minister equally so over the mind of the monarch.

But Mary de Medici could not forgive, and she now openly showed her hatred of Richelieu, and exerted herself to the utmost to injure him with the king. Though daily defeating her intrigues, the cardinal dreaded her perseverance, and resolved to drag the king with him to another Italian campaign. Louis obeyed, and the court set out for the south, the queen-mother herself accompanying it. Richelieu, however, did not tarry for the slow motions of the monarch. He flew to the army, took upon him the command, and displayed all the abilities of a great general in out-manoeuvring and worsting the generals and armies of Savoy. In the meantime Louis fell dangerously ill at Lyons. His mother, an affectionate attendant on his sick-couch, resumed her former empire over him. At one moment his imminent death seemed to threaten the cardinal with ruin. Louis recovered, however, and his first act was to compel a reconciliation, in form at least, between the cardinal and the queen-mother.

The king's illness, although not so immediately fatal to Richelieu as his enemies had hoped, was still attended with serious consequences to him. The French army met with ill success through the treachery of the general, Marillac, who was secretly attached to the queen's party, and the failure was attributed to Richelieu.

Mary de Medici renewed her solicitations to her son, that he would dismiss his minister. Louis, it appears, made a promise to that effect; a reluctant promise, given to get rid of her importunity. Mary calculated too securely upon his keeping it; she broke forth in bitter contumely against Richelieu; deprived him of his superintendence over her household, and treated Madame de Combalet, the cardinal's niece, who had sunk on her knees to entreat her to moderate her anger almost with insult. The king was present, and seemed to sanction her violence so that Richelieu withdrew to make his preparations for exile. Louis, dissatisfied and irresolute, retired to Versailles; while Mary remained triumphant at the Luxembourg, receiving the congratulations of her party. Richelieu, in the meantime, ere taking his departure, repaired to Versailles, and, once there, resumed the ascendant over the monarch. The tidings of this was a thunder-stroke to Mary and her party, who became instantly the victims of the cardinal's revenge. Marillac was beheaded, and Mary de Medici, herself at length completely vanquished by her rival, was driven out of France to spend the rest of her days in exile.