This consideration led Galileo to reflect on the use which might be made of his pendulum for this purpose; and, with respect to the other difficulty, he contrived a peculiar kind of telescope, with which he flattered himself, somewhat prematurely, that it would be as easy to observe on ship-board as on shore. During his stay at Rome, in 1615, and the following year, he disclosed some of these ideas to the Conte di Lemos, the viceroy of Naples, who had been president of the council of the Spanish Indies, and was fully aware of the importance of the matter. Galileo was in consequence invited to communicate directly with the Duke of Lerma, the Spanish minister, and instructions were accordingly sent by Cosmo, to the Conte Orso d'Elci, his ambassador at Madrid, to conduct the business there. Galileo entered warmly into the design, of which he had no other means of verifying the practicability; for as he says in one of his letters to Spain—"Your excellency may well believe that if this were an undertaking which I could conclude by myself, I would never have gone about begging favours from others; but in my study there are neither seas, nor Indies, nor islands, nor ports, nor shoals, nor ships, for which reason I am compelled to share the enterprise with great personages, and to fatigue myself to procure the acceptance of that, which ought with eagerness to be asked of me; but I console myself with the reflection that I am not singular in this, but that it commonly happens, with the exception of a little reputation, and that too often obscured and blackened by envy, that the least part of the advantage falls to the share of the inventors of things, which afterwards bring great gain, honours, and riches to others; so that I will never cease on my part to do every thing in my power, and I am ready to leave here all my comforts, my country, my friends, and family, and to cross over into Spain, to stay as long as I may be wanted in Seville, or Lisbon, or wherever it may be convenient, to implant the knowledge of this method, provided that due assistance and diligence be not wanting on the part of those who are to receive it, and who should solicit and foster it." But he could not, with all his enthusiasm, rouse the attention of the Spanish court. The negotiation languished, and although occasionally renewed during the next ten or twelve years, was never brought to a satisfactory issue. Some explanation of this otherwise unaccountable apathy of the Spanish court, with regard to the solution of a problem which they had certainly much at heart, is given in Nelli's life of Galileo; where it is asserted, on the authority of the Florentine records, that Cosmo required privately from Spain, (in return for the permission granted for Galileo to leave Florence, in pursuance of this design,) the privilege of sending every year from Leghorn two merchantmen, duty free, to the Spanish Indies. FOOTNOTES: