certain poignant tenderness at the worn face of the moon; that little
``fossil world'' (the child of our mother earth, too) bears such
terrible scars of its brief convulsive life that a sense of pity is
awakened by the sight. The moon is the wonder-land of the telescope.
Those towering mountains, whose ``proud aspiring peaks'' cast
silhouettes of shadow that seem drawn with india-ink; those vast
plains, enchained with gentle winding hills and bordered with giant
ranges; those oval ``oceans,'' where one looks expectant for the flash
of wind-whipped waves; those enchanting ``bays'' and recesses at the
seaward feet of the Alps; those broad straits passing between guardian
heights incomparably mightier than Gibraltar; those locket-like
valleys as secluded among their mountains as the Vale of Cashmere;
those colossal craters that make us smile at the pretensions of
Vesuvius, Etna, and Cotopaxi; those strange white ways which pass with
the unconcern of Roman roads across mountain, gorge, and valley -- all
these give the beholder an irresistible impression that it is truly a
world into which he is looking, a world akin to ours, and yet no more
like our world than Pompeii is like Naples. Its air, its waters, its
clouds, its life are gone, and only a skeleton remains -- a mute but
eloquent witness to a cosmical tragedy without parallel in the range
of human knowledge.

One cannot but regret that the moon, if it ever was the seat of
intelligent life, has not remained so until our time. Think what the
consequences would have been if this other world at our very door had
been found to be both habitable and inhabited! We talk rather airily
of communicating with Mars by signals; but Mars never approaches
nearer than 35,000,000 miles, while the moon when nearest is only a
little more than 220,000 miles away. Given an effective magnifying
power of five thousand diameters, which will perhaps be possible at