Although the Pope himself, as well as the Inquisitors, had examined Galileo's manuscript, and, not having the sagacity to detect the real motives of the author, had consented to its publication, yet, when the book was out, the enemies of Galileo found means to alarm the court of Rome, and Galileo was summoned to appear before the Inquisition. The philosopher was then seventy years old, and very infirm, and it was with great difficulty that he performed the journey. His unequalled dignity and celebrity, however, commanded the involuntary respect of the tribunal before which he was summoned, which they manifested by permitting him to reside at the palace of his friend, the Tuscan Ambassador; and when it became necessary, in the course of the inquiry, to examine him in person, although his removal to the Holy Office was then insisted upon, yet he was not, like other heretics, committed to close and solitary confinement. On the contrary, he was lodged in the apartments of the Head of the Inquisition, where he was allowed the attendance of his own servant, who was also permitted to sleep in an adjoining room, and to come and go at pleasure. These were deemed extraordinary indulgences in an age when the punishment of heretics usually began before their trial. About four months after Galileo's arrival in Rome, he was summoned to the Holy Office. He was detained there during the whole of that day; and on the next day was conducted, in a penitential dress, to the Convent of Minerva, where the Cardinals and Prelates, his judges, were assembled for the purpose of passing judgement upon him, by which this venerable old man was solemnly called upon to renounce and abjure, as impious and heretical, the opinions which his whole existence had been consecrated to form and strengthen. Probably there is not a more curious document in the history of science, than that which contains the sentence of the Inquisition on Galileo, and his consequent abjuration. It teaches us so much, both of the darkness and bigotry of the terrible Inquisition, and of the sufferings encountered by those early martyrs of science, that I will transcribe for your perusal, from the excellent 'Life of Galileo' in the 'Library of Useful Knowledge,' (from which I have borrowed much already,) the entire record of this transaction. The sentence of the Inquisition is as follows: "We, the undersigned, by the grace of God, Cardinals of the Holy Roman Church, Inquisitors General throughout the whole Christian Republic, Special Deputies of the Holy Apostolical Chair against heretical depravity: