abjured as above with my own hand." Those who believe the story about his muttering to a friend, as he rose from his knees, "e pur si muove," do not realize the scene. 1st. There was no friend in the place. 2nd. It would have been fatally dangerous to mutter anything before such an assemblage. 3rd. He was by this time an utterly broken and disgraced old man; wishful, of all things, to get away and hide himself and his miseries from the public gaze; probably with his senses deadened and stupefied by the mental sufferings he had undergone, and no longer able to think or care about anything--except perhaps his daughter,--certainly not about any motion of this wretched earth. Far and wide the news of the recantation spread. Copies of the abjuration were immediately sent to all Universities, with instructions to the professors to read it publicly. At Florence, his home, it was read out in the Cathedral church, all his friends and adherents being specially summoned to hear it. For a short time more he was imprisoned in Rome; but at length was permitted to depart, never more of his own will to return. He was allowed to go to Siena. Here his daughter wrote consolingly, rejoicing at his escape, and saying how joyfully she already recited the penitential psalms for him, and so relieved him of that part of his sentence. But the poor girl was herself, by this time, ill--thoroughly worn out with anxiety and terror; she lay, in fact, on what proved to be her death-bed. Her one wish was to see her dearest lord and father, so she calls him, once more. The wish was granted. His prison was changed, by orders from Rome, from Siena to Arcetri, and once more father and daughter embraced. Six days after this she died. The broken-hearted old man now asks for permission to go to live in Florence, but is met with the stern answer that he is to stay at Arcetri, is not to go out of the house, is not to receive visitors, and that if he asks for more favours, or transgresses the commands laid upon him, he is liable to be haled back to Rome and cast into a dungeon. These harsh measures were dictated, not by cruelty, but by the fear of his still spreading heresy by conversation, and so he was to be kept isolated. Idle, however, he was not and could not be. He often complains that his head is too busy for his body. In the enforced solitude of Arcetri he was composing those dialogues on motion which are now reckoned his greatest and most solid achievement. In these the true laws of motion are set forth for the first time (see page 167). One more astronomical discovery also he was to make--that of the moon's libration.