Page:Life in the Old World - Vol. II.djvu/44

54 placed upon a celestial globe, he points upwards, demonstrating to two young men, his pupils, the laws of the heavenly bodies. The form is still powerful, and an ermine cloak hangs from the shoulders. You see through the open door the clear, blue sky, and the mild countenance of a monk looking into the room, watchful over the blind seer. It is the warden and the friend who has been given to him when, after the period of persecution and imprisonment, they gave him an asylum in the beautiful Villa d'Arcetri, near Florence, which since then has been called La Giviella. They have intentionally omitted amongst these pictured memorials of his life, that moment which is perhaps the most remarkable of all, when, in order to free himself from imprisonment in the Roman Inquisition, he denied his assertion that the earth moved round the sun—which the wise fathers in Rome regarded as a contradiction of the doctrine of Scripture,—but immediately after the denial he protested against it, and as if compelled by his genius, stamped upon the earth, and exclaimed, “Ma pur si muove,” (but it turns after all)! What an exquisite subject for a picture! In the rotunda, lighted from above, which arches over these pictures and the white marble statue of Galileo, are preserved all his instruments; even the forefinger of his right hand, encircled with a gold ring and pointing upwards, is shown under a glass case. On the vaulted roof, which is painted blue, all Galileo's astronomical discoveries are portrayed in gilded bas-relief. Round him are ranged busts of the men who, during his lifetime, where his patrons or friends, and most distinguished pupils. The walls are of