One writer declared that as astrologers had got along very well without these planets, there could be no reason for their starting into existence.
"But his greatest heresy was this: He was tried, condemned, and punished for declaring that the sun was the centre of the system, and that the earth moved around it; also, that the earth turned on its axis.
"For teaching this, Galileo was called before the assembled cardinals of Rome, and, clad in black cloth, was compelled to kneel, and to promise never again to teach that the earth moved.

It is said that when he arose he whispered, 'It does move!' "He was tried at the Hall of Sopre Minerva.

In fewer than two hundred years from that time the Church of St.Ignasio was built, and the monastery on whose walls the instruments of the modern observatory stand.
"It is a very singular fact, but one which seems to show that even in science 'the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church,' that the spot where Galileo was tried is very near the site of the present observatory, to which the pope was very liberal.
"From the Hall of Sopre Minerva you make but two turns through short streets to the Fontenelle de Borghese, in the rear of which stands the present observatory.
"Indeed, if a cardinal should, at the Hall of Sopre Minerva, call out to Secchi, 'Watchman, what of the night ?' Secchi could hear the question; and no bolder views emanate from any observatory than those which Secchi sends out.
"I sent a card to Secchi, and awaited a call, well satisfied to have a little more time for listless strolling among ruins and into the studios.

And so we spent many an hour: picking up land shells from the top of the Coliseum, gathering violets in the upper chambers of the Palace of the Caesars,--for the overgrown walls made climbing very easy,--or, resting upon some broken statue on the Forum, we admired the arches of the Temple of Peace, thrown upon the rich blue of the sunny skies.
"Returning one day from a drive, I met two priests descending one of the upper flights of stairs in the house where I lived.

As my rooms had been blessed once, and holy water sprinkled upon them, I thought perhaps another process of that kind had just been gone through, and was about to pass them, when one of them, accosting me, asked if I were the Signorine Mitchell,--changing his Italian to good English as he saw that I was, and introducing himself as Father Secchi.