plicio got the argument. If the Pope was really meant, and had used the very argument which Galileo put into the mouth of Simplicio, there was nothing in the least offensive in refuting it; and if the Pope really did believe that Galileo had him in his eye, we think that he must have been pleased rather than offended. After the publication of the Dialogues in 1632, the Pope had read Simplicio's speech, and the answer to it by Salviati and Sagredi; but, in place of being ashamed of it, or taking offence at the replies to it, he actually tells Niccolini, on the 13th March 1633, that Galileo and his adherents had never been able, and never would be able, to answer his argument!

In defending his countryman against the charge, that "he had the misfortune or the malice of doing a great wrong to the Pope, who had been his friend," Baron Plana, the Newton of Italy, and recently elected one of the eight Foreign Associates of the French Academy of Sciences, has entered fully into the subject, and adduced strong arguments in refutation of the calumny against Galileo. "The argumentation," he says, " of M. Biot only proves that Pope Urban VIII. acted towards Galileo as if he had personally insulted him; but it cannot prove that, in writing his Dialogues, Galileo availed himself of the fictitious name, Simplicio, to make offensive allusions to the arguments which the Pope used when conversing with him in 1624." The Baron has supported this view of the case by referring to the publication, in 1638, of Galileo's New Dialogues on Local Motion, in which the three interlocutors are Salviati, Sagredi, and Simplicio, as in his former work. These Dialogues were written during his seclusion at Arcetri, which the Pope granted to him as a signal favour at the intercession of the Grand Duke; and he certainly would not have used the name of Simplicio had it recalled to the Pope and the Church the personal offence with which it is supposed to have been associated. Baron Plana regards "the reproduction of Simplicio in 1638 as a protestation of his innocence on the part of Galileo."

It is very probable that the Jesuits and Galileo's other enemies may have tried to persuade the Pope that he was ridiculed in the person of Simplicio; but it is evident, as Baron Plana has shown, from the letter of Father Castelli to Galileo, dated 12th July 1636, and from a letter from Galileo himself to his friend, Fulgenzio Micanzio, that after the condemnation of Galileo the Pope did not believe that he was the very eminent and learned person referred to by Simplicio, and that Galileo himself disavowed the imputation as a wicked device of his enemies. Venturi, the editor of the unpublished letters of Galileo, believes that the name Simplicio was applied to the body of the Peripatetics, and not to any individual; and Baron Plana has adopted his

opinion. When the French ambassador, in 1636, represented to the Pope that Galileo had been in this matter traduced by his enemies, his Holiness exclaimed, Lo crediamo, lo crediamo! "I believe it, I believe it." On the same occasion, as Castelli tells Galileo, the Pope spoke of him with much benignity, and said, "I have always loved him, and had even given him a pension.' The celebrated conversation in the Vatican, to which M. Biot has attached so much importance, and which revealed to him such new and important information, turns out to be a mere repetition of an old story which Olivieri had read in Venturi's work, where it is even more fully detailed. "I am surprised," says Baron Plana, "that M. Biot should have been ignorant of the particulars which he heard from Father Olivieri, for Venturi had published them more fully at Modena in 1821. Even in the 18th century, Nelli, in his Life of Galileo, mentions the same story, and, long before Biot published it, Mr Drinkwater Bethune1 referred to it in his life of Galileo, and Sir David Brewster2 treats it as an incredible imputation.3

If we have succeeded in conveying to our readers the impression made upon ourselves by "The Conversation in the Vatican," and the elaborate commentaries upon it by the French Academician, himself a Catholic, we shall have done some service to truth and to science. We shall have absolved Galileo from the odious charge of having ridiculed and insulted Pope Urban VIII., who had treated him with the most affectionate kindness, and the most unbounded generosity, and who had, in 1616, rescued him from the grasp of the Inquisition. We shall have defended the Holy Father from the still heavier charge of having, under the influence of personal revenge, compassed the ruin of his friend. And we shall have defended the congregation of the Index, who tried Galileo and unanimously condemned him, from having been influenced in the discharge of so solemn a duty by the ignoble motive of gratifying, in the person of their chief, the basest of the passions.

In thus repudiating the speculations of M. Biot, we have not defended the great astronomer in his ingratitude to Maffeo Barberini, his friend and benefactor, nor the Holy Father and his Inquisitors in their condemnation of demonstrated truth, and their imprisonment of him who taught it; and still less have we

1 Library of Useful Knowledge-Life of Galileo, chap. viii.

2 Martyrs of Science, pp. 67, 68.

In the passage in Venturi, which contains the whole story told by Olivieri, he refers to a particular page (146) which is expressly quoted by Biot. Baron Plana, therefore, cannot understand, and we cannot help him to explain, the silence of Biot respecting the passage in Venturi, vol. ii., p. 193, in which Olivieri's story is fully given.

found that, in the new aspect so painfully given to the trial of Galileo, "scientific truth has been separated from the accessories of human passion which had envenomed it," and that science and religion have rushed into each other's arms. Religion is never less divine than when virulent passion has been the impulse, and human ends the achievement; and science can never be honoured when its representative abjures the truths with which God has inspired him, and casts away the crown of martyrdom in his grasp.

It is a grievous fact in the history of the Catholic Church, that two of its functionaries-the Grand Inquisitor of Rome and the Keeper of its Secret Archives-should have appeared in the middle of the 19th century to defend the Inquisition of the 17th by at once slandering the high priest of science and the High Priest of Rome; and, strange to relate, that this defence should consist in the plea that it condemned truth and threatened torture to its apostle in order to gratify private revenge! The Commissary-General Olivieri must have been amused at the success with which he served up as new to "a simple savant," as M. Biot calls himself, the old slander from the pages of Venturi; and Monsignore Marino-Marini, the keeper and garbler of the sacred archives— may yet have to answer to united Italy for the falsification of the documents of his Church, and his venomous slander of Galileo. From the metropolis of Italian Sardinia, Baron Plana has anticipated the feelings of his countrymen; and the child of Pisa, the stripling of Padua, the ornament of Florence, and the prisoner of Rome, will doubtless stand before his liberated country as the dauntless assertor of physical truth, the morning star of Italian science, and the type of Italy stretching her dungeoned limbs and girding herself for victory.

We would willingly leave M. Biot to the judgment of others -his "Conversation in the Vatican," etc., to be appreciated by his colleagues in the Institute-and his heartless commentaries to the dissection of Baron Plana and the philosophers of Italy. Great men are not the worshippers of the greatest. He who is highest in the lists of fame may be lowered to our own level, and the slanderer may rejoice in his work; but posterity, ever just to genius, will continue to assert its rights and avenge the victim. He who has not spared the sacred memory of Newton, with his "white soul” and lofty intellect, might have been silent over the errors of Galileo, and wept over his many woes.

The Sicilian Game.

ART. X.-The Sicilian Game.

549

THE Sicilian method of opening the game of chess is extremely irregular, and very little practised. But the chess authorities tell us that, in the hands of a good player, it is the most brilliant and successful of all the openings. On the political chessboard of Europe, a great game has now been commenced with the Sicilian move. As nothing can be more irregular than the method of attack, so we hope that the final checkmate will be rapid and brilliant, that those who deserve to win will win gloriously, and that those who deserve to lose will lose unmistakeably. To understand this great game, however, we must remember that it is not confined to the Sicilies alone, nor even to Italy. Sicily is but a distant square upon the board. The game is European. France is one of the prime movers in it; Austria has large interests at stake; and what sincere Catholic does not feel concerned in whatever may happen to the chair of St Peter? Moreover, as Lord John Russell pointed out in a late despatch to our ambassador at Turin, Great Britain is to some extent implicated in the struggle, for we hold in the Adriatic the rebellious Ionian Islands by a tenure precisely the same as that which Austria can show for Venetia. Nor can Germany be indifferent, when she sees that the same rule of thumb which has annexed Savoy to France, and has all but succeeded in subjecting the whole of Italy to the sceptre of Sardinia, may, with scarcely less reason, be applied to the rectification of the Rhenish frontier, and made to prove the advantages of uniting the petty German states under a single ruler. What is more, the events now occurring in Syria are an unpleasant diversion which, having thus far established the principle of a French intervention, may lead to we know not what results. Our hands may be tied in the East, or they may be tied in the West, so as to give to France or to Russia the power of accomplishing, without check, the worst designs. The forces engaged are tremendous. The issues at stake are of incalculable importance. It is for Italy, for Naples, for Garibaldi, and for Victor Emmanuel, that we feel the more immediate interest. But no one who examines the situation thoroughly will permit himself to be blinded by the actual position of the game to the larger possibilities which it involves. It may be that the fires now running along the Italian valleys will burn out; but fires are not easily extinguished, and especially if the firemen feed the flames with oil. Last year we had a mighty conflagration in Northern Italy, which filled the coollest heads in Europe with alarm. This year we have a smaller blaze in Southern Italy, which is scarcely less

dangerous. On the Continent they are far more alarmed about it than we are in England; and there is some reason to hope that the precautions dictated by this alarm will be the means of ensuring peace for Europe and safety for Italy. A few months will show; a few weeks may decide. Meanwhile we invite our readers to a rapid survey of the Italian struggle as far as it has gone, and to a calm analysis of the results to which that struggle is tending.

It would be very pleasant if we could enter upon this investigation with a firm grasp of principles. Unhappily, at the present moment, the British Government, herein representing the British nation, has no definite principles of foreign policy. Broadly it may be stated, that we are so well satisfied with the actual results, as to be willing to shut our eyes to the means by which the results have been attained. We sympathize with the aspirations of Italians, rejoice in their freedom, and fondly trust that the creation of a strong Italian kingdom is something more tangible than a dream. England is eager to accept what has been achieved in Italy as accomplished facts. And yet, at every step of the process by which these facts have been accomplished, she is obliged to turn her head away in shame, to hide her blushes in a pocket-handkerchief, and to pronounce the timid, feminine No, when she loves nothing better than Yes. The position is not a dignified one, and is the result of a compromise between our theories and our practical instincts. The foreign policy of this country, in so far as it is capable of definition, resolves itself into one word — Non-intervention. But we have really never been able to determine what the word means. "Non-intervention!" said Talleyrand

"non-intervention! I do not know what it means. It is a political word-a diplomatic word, which is very nearly equivalent to intervention." Recognising the great principle of non-interference as the corner-stone of international law, the question arises, whether the law is of any value unless it be enforced. What is the nature of that man's virtue which prevents him from robbing his neighbour's cash-box, but permits him to see the robbery effected by somebody else without raising an alarm? What are the professions of that man worth, who, incapable of committing murder himself, allows his friend to be murdered before his eyes? What is the meaning of non-intervention, if it is a principle binding upon ourselves, so that while we religiously refuse to interfere, we allow anybody else to do so? We saw France interfering in Italy. We murmured at what we were powerless to prevent; and when victory crowned the French arms, we presented our congratulations to the Emperor, and the right hand of fellowship to King Victor Emmanuel. So