near the top of the tower, and, needless to say, they reached the
ground together. Of course, the spectators were but little
pleased with what they saw. They could not doubt the evidence of
their own senses as to the particular experiment in question;
they could suggest, however, that the experiment involved a
violation of the laws of nature through the practice of magic. To
controvert so firmly established an idea savored of heresy. The
young man guilty of such iconoclasm was naturally looked at
askance by the scholarship of his time. Instead of being
applauded, he was hissed, and he found it expedient presently to
retire from Pisa.

Fortunately, however, the new spirit of progress had made itself
felt more effectively in some other portions of Italy, and so
Galileo found a refuge and a following in Padua, and afterwards
in Florence; and while, as we have seen, he was obliged to curb
his enthusiasm regarding the subject that was perhaps nearest his
heart--the promulgation of the Copernican theory--yet he was
permitted in the main to carry on his experimental observations
unrestrained. These experiments gave him a place of unquestioned
authority among his contemporaries, and they have transmitted his
name to posterity as that of one of the greatest of experimenters
and the virtual founder of modern mechanical science. The
experiments in question range over a wide field; but for the most
part they have to do with moving bodies and with questions of
force, or, as we should now say, of energy. The experiment at the
leaning tower showed that the velocity of falling bodies is
independent of the weight of the bodies, provided the weight is
sufficient to overcome the resistance of the atmosphere. Later
experiments with falling bodies led to the discovery of laws