It had long been perceived at Rome that, in spite of every effort, it was vain to try to bury the Copernican system with Galileo in the grave. It could no longer greatly concern the Roman curia that Galileo’s memory was held in high honour, when the cause for which he suffered had decidedly gained the victory. It was by a singular freak of nature that in the very same year which closed the career of this great observer of her laws, another who was to complete the work begun by Copernicus and carried on by Galileo, entered upon his. He it is, as we all know, who gave to science those eternal forms now recognised as firmly established, and whose genius, by the discovery of the law of gravitation, crowned the edifice of which Copernicus laid the foundations and which Galileo upreared. During the lifetime of the latter, and the period immediately succeeding his death, the truth of the system of the earth’s double motion was recognised by numerous learned men; and in 1696, when Newton published his immortal work, “Philosophiæ naturalis principia Mathematica,” it became thoroughly established. All the scientific world who pursued the paths of free investigation accepted the Copernican system, and only a few ossified devotees of the old school, in common with some theological philosophers, still raised impotent objections to it, which have been continued even up to this day by some wrong-headed people.[607] At Rome they only accommodated themselves to the new system slowly and reluctantly. In 1757, when it was no longer doubted by any one but a few fanatics, the Congregation of the Index thought the time was come for proposing to Pope Benedict XIV. to expunge the clause from the decree of 5th March, 1616, prohibiting all books which teach that the sun is stationary and the earth revolves. This enlightened pontiff, known as a patron of the arts and sciences, entirely agreed, and signified his consent on 11th May, 1757.[608] But there still remained on the Index the work of Copernicus, “De Revolutionibus Orbium Cœlestium,” Diego di Zuñiga’s “Commentary on the Book of Job” (these two works, however, only “donec corrigantur,” but this was quite worthless for strict Catholics as far as the work of Copernicus was concerned, as since the announcement of these “corrections” by the decree of 15th May, 1620, no new edition had appeared), Foscarini’s “Léttera sópra l’opinione de i Pittagorici e del Copernico della mobilità della Terra et stabilità del Sole, e il nuove Pittagorico Sistéma del Mondo,” Kepler’s “Epitome astronomiæ Copernicæ,” and finally, Galileo’s “Dialogo sopra i due Massimi Sistémi del Mondo.” This last work had indeed been allowed to appear in the edition of Galileo’s collected works,[609] undertaken at Padua in 1744, which had received the prescribed ecclesiastical permission; but the editor, the Abbot Toaldo, had been obliged expressly to state in an introduction that the theory of the double motion can and must be regarded only as a