that is, "I have observed that the most distant planet is triple," or, as he further explains the matter, "I have with great admiration observed that Saturn is not a single star, but three together, which as it were touch each other; they have no relative motion, and are constituted in this form [Symbol: oOo] the middle being somewhat larger than the lateral ones. If we examine them with an eye-glass which magnifies the surface less than 1000 times, the three stars do not appear very distinctly, but Saturn has an oblong appearance, like the appearance of an olive, thus [Symbol: horizontal 0]. Now I have discovered a court for Jupiter, and two servants for this old man, who aid his steps and never quit his side." Galileo was, however, no match in this style of writing for Kepler, who disapproved his friend's metaphor, and, in his usual fanciful and amusing strain,—"I will not," said he, "make an old man of Saturn, nor slaves of his attendant globes, but rather let this tricorporate form be Geryon, so shall Galileo be Hercules, and the telescope his club; armed with which, he has conquered that distant planet, and dragged him from the remotest depths of nature, and exposed him to the view of all." Galileo's glass was not of sufficient power to shew him the real constitution of this extraordinary planet; it was reserved for Huyghens, about the year 1656, to declare to the world that these supposed attendant stars are in fact part of a ring which surrounds, and yet is completely distinct from the body of Saturn;[59] and the still more accurate observations of Herschel have ascertained that it consists of two concentric rings revolving round the planet, and separated from each other by a space which our most powerful telescopes scarcely enable us to measure. Galileo's second statement concluded with the remark, that "in the other planets nothing new was to be observed;" but a month had scarcely elapsed, before he communicated to the world another enigma, _Hæc immatura à me jam frustra leguntur oy_, which, as he said, contained the announcement of a new phenomenon, in the highest degree important to the truth of the Copernican system. The interpretation of this is, _Cynthiæ figuras æmulatur mater amorum_,