Galileo seemed, indeed, as Nature's philosopher of his time. "He interrogated the laws of nature by experiments and observations, and we have to ascribe to him the first true investigation of the laws of terrestrial gravity." Had he stood firm and maintained the truths which God had permitted him to comprehend, the lights of a true science would then have shone forth, and it is possible that our knowledge to-day would be far in advance of what it is. We judge thus, because of the rapid advance made during the last century, especially since Dr. William Herschel first pointed his telescope toward the heavens. But on Galileo's arrival at Rome, neither his venerable age, his enlightened mind, his acknowledged comprehensive and brilliant intellect, nor even his honorable and eloquent appeals for a full and scientific investigation as to the correctness of his theory, could gain a generous response. The powers that ruled had not made the advance, and it was dangerous to them to permit any one outside to do so. Hence, all new doctrines were held as heretical, and must be crushed at once. He was placed in confinement, charged with treason and conspiracy against the Church; his views heretical, such as demanded the most rigorous punishment;--even after he should renounce them before the cardinals sitting as Inquisitors in his case. The charges against him were those of his published views, which he freely acknowledged, and, while he knew them to be _truths_, yet so controlling was the influence of his belief in the dogmas of that church--even as it is with all its adherents--that he bowed to its fiat, and, on bended knees laid his hand upon the Holy Gospels, and swore by them and the Roman Catholic Church, before God, and the Inquisition of Cardinals, that the _truths he had published_ were _false_, abjuring, cursing, and detesting them as heresies; and swore a life allegiance to the Church, and received submissively, his sentence to a dungeon in the Inquisition for life. Says Prof. Olmsted, "We cannot approve of his employing artifice in the promulgation of truth; and we are compelled to lament that his lofty spirit bowed in the final conflict. How far, therefore, he sinks below the dignity of a Christian martyr!"