Worn out with age and infirmities, and exhausted with the fatigues of his journey, Galileo arrived at Rome on the 14th of February, 1633. The Tuscan ambassador announced his arrival in an official form to the commissary of the holy office, and Galileo awaited in calm dignity the approach of his trial. Among those who proffered their advice in this distressing emergency, we must enumerate the Cardinal Barberino, the Pope's nephew, who, though he may have felt the necessity of an interference on the part of the church, was yet desirous that it should be effected with the least injury to Galileo and to science. He accordingly visited Galileo, and advised him to remain as much at home as possible, to keep aloof from general society, and to see only his most intimate friends. The same advice was given from different quarters; and Galileo, feeling its propriety, remained in strict seclusion in the palace of the Tuscan ambassador. During the whole of the trial which had now commenced, Galileo was treated with the most marked indulgence. Abhorring, as we must do, the principles and practice of this odious tribunal, and reprobating its interference with the cautious deductions of science, we must yet admit that, on this occasion, its deliberations were not dictated by passion, nor its power directed by vengeance. Though placed at their judgment-seat as a heretic, Galileo stood there with the recognised attributes of a sage; and though an offender against the laws of which they were the guardian, yet the highest respect was yielded to his genius, and the kindest commiseration to his infirmities. In the beginning of April, when his examination in person was to commence, it became necessary that he should be removed to the holy office; but instead of committing him, as was the practice, to solitary confinement, he was provided with apartments in the house of the fiscal of the Inquisition. His table was provided by the Tuscan ambassador, and his servant was allowed to attend him at his pleasure, and to sleep in an adjoining apartment. Even this nominal confinement, however, Galileo's high spirit was unable to brook. An attack of the disease to which he was constitutionally subject contributed to fret and irritate him, and he became impatient for a release from his anxiety as well as from his bondage. Cardinal Barberino seems to have received notice of the state of Galileo's feelings, and, with a magnanimity which posterity will ever honour, he liberated the philosopher on his own responsibility; and in ten days after his first examination, and on the last day of April, he was restored to the hospitable roof of the Tuscan ambassador.