asion, threat and torture were tried in turn, but all in
vain, for Bruno would not swerve. Unlike Savonarola his quivering flesh
could not wring from his heart an apology.

He scorned the rack and thumbscrew, declaring they could not reach his
soul. He knew that death would be the end; he prayed for it, and even
thought to hasten it by an aggravating manner and harshness of speech
toward his captors, seemingly quite unnecessary.

For seven long years he was in prison. He was burned alive on the
Seventh of February, Sixteen Hundred, aged fifty-two.

When bound to the stake he turned his face from the crucifix that was
held before him, and sought to kiss the fagots. His ashes were thrown to
the four winds. Thus perished Bruno.

* * * * *

In the year Fifteen Hundred Sixty-four, Galileo Galilei was born;
consequently, he was thirty-six years old when Bruno was executed. He
had known Bruno, had attended many of his lectures, and had followed his
career with interest; and while he agreed with him concerning the
Copernican theory of the earth's revolution, he took exceptions to
Bruno's arbitrary ways of presenting the matter, and also to his
scathing criticisms of theology. At this time Galileo could not see that
the extravagant words of Bruno were largely forced from him by the
violence of the opposition he had encountered. Galileo fully believed
that Bruno had been put to death for treason to the Church, and not on
account of his astronomical teachings.

These men had come up from totally different stations in life. Bruno was
a man of the people--a self-made man--who bore upon his person the marks
of the hammer. Galileo was of noble blood, and traced an ancestry to a
Gonfalonier of Florence. From early infancy he had enjoyed association
with polite persons, and had sat on the knees of greatness.

When eighteen he was graduated from the University of Pisa; and at that
early age his family and friends were comparing him, not without reason,
to a Genius who had come out of Tuscany some years before, Leonardo da
Vinci.

Parents either exaggerate the talents of their children or else
belittle them. The woman who bore George Gordon called him "that lame
brat"; but we call him "The Poet Byron."

Benjamin Franklin ran away from home, and his family thought themselves
disgraced by his printed utterances. George Washington's mother, after
being told that her son had been made Commander-in-Chie