he doctrine was daily making
converts, and nightly gathering strength from the accordance of the
tables of the motions of the heavenly bodies calculated upon its
principles with actual observation.

[Sidenote: Invention of the telescope.] It is by no means uninteresting
to notice the different classes of men among whom this great theory was
steadily winning its way. Experimental philosophers, Republican poets,
Episcopal clergymen, Scotch lords, West of England schoolmasters,
Italian physicists, Polish pedants, painstaking Germans, each from his
own special point of view, was gradually receiving the light, and
doubtless, from such varied influence, the doctrine would have
vindicated its supremacy at last, though it might have taken a long
time. On a sudden, however, there occurred a fortunate event, which led
forthwith to that result by a new train of evidence, bringing the
matter, under the most brilliant circumstances, clearly to the
apprehension of every one. This great and fortunate event was the
invention of the telescope.

[Sidenote: Galileo constructs one.] It is needless to enter on any
examination of the authorship of this invention. It is enough for our
purpose to know that Lippershey, a Dutchman, had made one toward the
close of 1608, and that Galileo, hearing of the circumstance, but
without knowing the particulars of the construction, in April or May of
the following year invented a form of it for himself. Not content with
admiring how close and large it made terrestrial objects, he employed it
for examining the heavens. [Sidenote: Telescopic astronomical
discoveries.] On turning it to the moon, he found that she has mountains
casting shadows, and valleys like those of the earth. The discovery of
innumerable fixed stars--not fewer than forty were counted by him in the
well-known group of the Pleiades--up to that time unseen by man, was
felt at once to offer an insuperable argument against the opinion that
these bodies were created only to illuminate the night; indeed, it may
be said that this was a death-blow to the time-honoured doctrine of the
human destiny of the universe. Already Galileo began to encounter vulgar
indignation, which accused him loudly of impiety. On January 7th, 1610,
he discovered three of Jupiter's satellites, and a few days later the
fourth. To these he gave the designation of the Medicean stars, and in
his "Sidereal Messenger" published an account of the facts he had thus
far observ