Galileo was ordered to Rome to explain himself before the tribunal of the Inquisition. After remaining a month in the palace of the ambassador of Tuscany, he was removed to the palace of the Inquisition, but so far from being imprisoned there, he himself informs one of his friends that he has the use of three spacious apartments, and the services of his own servant, and that he can roam at pleasure through the whole building. On the 12th April 1633 Galileo underwent his first examination. He declares that in his dialogue upon the systems of the world, he neither maintains nor defends the opinion of the mobility of the earth and the immobility of the sun; that he even demonstrates the contrary opinion, shewing that the arguments of Copernicus are without weight, and are inconclusive. On his second examination, on the 30th April, he says plainly: “I do not actually entertain the opinion of the movement of the earth and the immobility of the sun; I will add to my _Dialogo_ two or three colloquies, and I promise to take up one by one the arguments in favour of the assertions which you condemn, and to refute them unanswerably.” Certainly the humiliation this great man underwent was profound. He had carried submission so far as to renounce the strongest convictions of the man of science. His persecutors were culpable and cruel, but our business here is only to examine carefully and truthfully the two following propositions: Was Galileo thrown into the dungeons of the Inquisition? and Was he subjected to torture? A valuable opportunity has been lost of clearing up the doubts which surround the trial of Galileo. In 1809 all the original documents relating to this suit were transmitted from Rome to Paris with the papal archives, and it was intended to publish the whole in the form of a volume consisting of seven or eight hundred pages. Delambre, the historian of modern astronomy, while sending several extracts from these deeds to Venturi, one of Galileo’s biographers, attributes the oblivion into which this intention was suffered to fall, entirely to political motives. Delambre informs us, moreover, that in 1820 the original deeds were no longer forthcoming. Monsignor Morrini, who had been commissioned to claim from the French government whatever appertained to the Holy See, endeavoured in vain to obtain the papers relating to the trial of Galileo. At length the manuscript was restored to Gregory XVI., it was not known how, or by whom, and it was deposited by Pius IX., in 1848, in the archives of the Vatican; since which date no full details have been published. It is now, however, positively affirmed that Galileo was never thrown into the dungeons of the Inquisition. After the second examination to which Galileo was subjected, Cardinal Barberini suffered him to return to his apartments at the embassy of the grand Duke of Tuscany, where the ambassador Nicolini, his family and household, continued to treat him with much affectionate consideration.