Scheiner counted five, Rheita nine, and other observers, with increasing contempt for Galileo's imperfect announcements, carried the number as high as twelve.[54] In imitation of Galileo's nomenclature, and to honour the sovereigns of the respective observers, these supposed additional satellites were dignified with the names of Vladislavian, Agrippine, Urbanoctavian, and Ferdinandotertian planets; but a very short time served to show it was as unsafe to exceed as to fall short of the number which Galileo had fixed upon, for Jupiter rapidly removed himself from the neighbourhood of the fixed stars, which gave rise to these pretended discoveries, carrying with him only his four original attendants, which continued in every part of his orbit to revolve regularly about him. Perhaps we cannot better wind up this account of the discovery of Jupiter's satellites, and of the intense interest they have at all times inspired, than in the words of one who inherits a name worthy to be ranked with that of Galileo in the list of astronomical discoverers, and who takes his own place among the most accomplished mathematicians of the present times. "The discovery of these bodies was one of the first brilliant results of the invention of the telescope; one of the first great facts which opened the eyes of mankind to the system of the universe, which taught them the comparative insignificance of their own planet, and the superior vastness and nicer mechanism of those other bodies, which had before been distinguished from the stars only by their motion, and wherein none but the boldest thinkers had ventured to suspect a community of nature with our own globe. This discovery gave the holding turn to the opinions of mankind respecting the Copernican system; the analogy presented by these little bodies (little however only in comparison with the great central body about which they revolve) performing their beautiful revolutions in perfect harmony and order about it, being too strong to be resisted. This elegant system was watched with all the curiosity and interest the subject naturally inspired. The eclipses of the satellites speedily attracted attention, and the more when it was discerned, as it speedily was, by Galileo himself, that they afforded a ready method of determining the difference of longitudes of distant places on the earth's surface, by observations of the instants of their disappearances and reappearances, simultaneously made. Thus the first astronomical solution of the great problem of the longitude, the first mighty step which pointed out a connection between speculative astronomy and practical utility, and which, replacing the fast dissipating dreams of astrology by nobler visions, showed how the stars might really, and without fiction, be called arbiters of the destinies of empires, we owe to the satellites of Jupiter, those atoms imperceptible to the naked eye, and floating like