i

let. vr. Kepler and Galileo. 97

Galileo considered nature as the sole agentof the Supreme Being ; and that sagacious ob-servance of her operations, which first led himto this useful discovery, was the means of con-ducting him to another of equal importance.Being with some company in a room, where alamp was suspended from the roof of the build-ing, this spectacle, which was unnoticed by therest of the spectators, afforded him a subject of themost profound meditation. He observed thatall the vibrations of the lamp, whether great orsmall, appeared to be performed in the same sen-sible time ; and from this circumstance, simpleas it may seem, he is said to have discovered theisochronism of the pendulum ; and that a longpendulum moves flower than a short one, ac-cording to a certain invariable proportion : bywhich means he obtained a new instrument formeasuring short intervals of time with greaterexactness than could be done by clocks, or anyother method then in use.

About the time of these discoveries, whichwere afterwards so fruitful in the hands of Huy-gens and others, we may place the invention ofthe telescope; an instrument so singular in itsnature, that before its actual construction, themind could not have conceived such a con-trivance, or imagined it to be possible. A luckyincident is said to have effected, what philosophymight have sought for in vain: the children ofII one