this is trivial. What is
important is that some faint and inaccurate echo of this news found its
way to Padua and into the ears of Galileo.

The seed fell on good soil. All that night he sat up and pondered. He
knew about lenses and magnifying-glasses. He had read Kepler's theory of
the eye, and had himself lectured on optics. Could he not hit on the
device and make an instrument capable of bringing the heavenly bodies
nearer? Who knew what marvels he might not so perceive! By morning he
had some schemes ready to try, and one of them was successful.
Singularly enough it was not the same plan as the Dutch optician's: it
was another mode of achieving the same end. He took an old small
organ-pipe, jammed a suitably chosen spectacle glass into either end,
one convex, the other concave, and, behold! he had the half of a
wretchedly bad opera-glass capable of magnifying three times. It was
better than the Dutchman's, however: it did not invert.

Such a thing as Galileo made may now be bought at a toy-shop for I
suppose half a crown, and yet what a potentiality lay in that "glazed
optic tube," as Milton called it. Away he went with it to Venice and
showed it to the Seigniory, to their great astonishment. "Many noblemen
and senators," says Galileo, "though of advanced age, mounted to the
top of one of the highest towers to watch the ships, which were visible
through my glass two hours before they were seen entering the harbor,
for it makes a thing fifty miles off as near and clear as if it were
only five." Among the people, too, the instrument excited the greatest
astonishment and interest, so that he was nearly mobbed. The Senate
hinted to him that a present of the instrument would not be
unacceptable, so Galileo took the hint and made another for them. They
immediately doubled his salary at Padua, making it one thousand florins,
and confirmed him in the enjoyment of it for life.

He now eagerly began the construction of a larger and better instrument.
Grinding the lenses with his own hands with consummate skill, he
succeeded in making a telescope magnifying thirty times. Thus equipped
he was ready to begin a survey of the heavens. The first object he
carefully examined was naturally the moon. He found there everything at
first sight very like the earth, mountains and valleys, craters and
plains, rocks, and apparently seas. You may imagine the hostility
excited among the Aristotelian philosophers, especially, no doubt, those