of the contents of the following pages as the most impartial critic.

He will even admit that he is not blind to their defects and
shortcomings. If the fragments had been less fragmentary, and fuller
information had been offered on the various subjects which fall under
consideration, he would have been better satisfied. Nevertheless, he
reflects that it would be hardly reasonable to expect in facts made
known under exceptional circumstances, that fulness of detail which we
have a right to demand, when on our own planet we essay to make
discoveries at the cost only of labour and research. He looks upon the
fragments as "intellectual aerolites," which have dropped here,
uninfluenced by the will of man; as varied pieces detached from the mass
of facts which constitute the possessions of another planet, and rather
as thrown by nature into rugged heaps than as having been symmetrically
arranged by the hand of an artist. Want of unity under these
circumstances is surely excusable.

One observation as to a matter of mere detail. Words, in the language of
the Star, are occasionally given in letters which represent the sounds
only, and will often be found to resemble words in some of our ancient
and modern languages. The very name of the City "Montalluyah," to which
all the fragments refer, is apparently compounded of heterogeneous
roots, one of Aryan the other of Semitic origin. These seeming
accidents, if such they be, must not be attributed to either
carelessness or design on the part of the Editor; nor does he attempt to
explain them. The reader may, if he please, account for the causes of
resemblance by considering that the number of articulate sounds is
limited, and that, therefore, the variety of words cannot be altogether
boundless; or he may take higher ground, and assume that in whatever
planet spoken, all languages have the Same Divine Origin.