loss. Notwithstanding
the perfection of our present tables of Jupiter's satellites, and of the
astronomical instruments by which their eclipses may be observed, the
method of Galileo is still impracticable at sea.

In consequence of the strict seclusion to which Galileo had been
subjected, he was in the practice of dating his letters from his prison
at Arcetri; but after he had lost the use of his eyes, the Inquisition
seems to have relaxed its severity, and to have allowed him the freest
intercourse with his friends. The Grand Duke of Tuscany paid him
frequent visits; and among the celebrated strangers who came from
distant lands to see the ornament of Italy, were Gassendi, Deodati, and
our illustrious countryman Milton. During the last three years of his
life, his eminent pupil Viviani formed one of his family; and in October
1641, the celebrated Torricelli, another of his pupils, was admitted to
the same distinction.

Though the powerful mind of Galileo still retained its vigour, yet his
debilitated frame was exhausted with mental labour. He often complained
that his head was too busy for his body; and the continuity of his
studies was frequently broken with attacks of hypochondria, want of
sleep, and acute rheumatic pains. Along with these calamities, he was
afflicted with another still more severe--with deafness almost total;
but though he was now excluded from all communication with the external
world, yet his mind still grappled with the material universe, and while
he was studying the force of percussion, and preparing for a
continuation of his "Dialogues on Motion," he was attacked with fever
and palpitation of the heart, which, after continuing two months,
terminated fatally on the 8th of January 1642, in the 78th year of his
age.

Having died in the character of a prisoner of the Inquisition, this
odious tribunal disputed his right of making a will, and of being buried
in consecrated ground. These objections, however, were withdrawn; but
though a large sum was subscribed for erecting a monument to him in the
church of Santa Croce, in Florence, the Pope would not permit the design
to be carried into execution. His sacred remains were, therefore,
deposited in an obscure corner of the church, and remained for more than
thirty years unmarked with any monumental tablet. The following epitaph,
given without any remark in the Leyden edition of his Dialogues, is, we
presume, the one which was inscribed on a tablet