Page:A discovery that the moon has a vast population of human beings.djvu/43

 reason that we considered the explicit description which we bave given of the telescope so important a preliminary. From these, however, and other prohibited passages, which will be published by Dr. Herschel, with the certificates of the civil and military authorities of the colony, and of several Episcopal, Wesleyan, and other ministers, who, in the month of March last, were permitted, under stipulation of temporary secrecy, to visit the observatory, and become eye-witnesses of the wonders which they were requested to attest, we are confident his forthcoming volumes will be at once the most sublime in science, and the most intense in general interest, that ever issued from the press.

The night of the 14th displayed the moon in her mean libration, or full; but the somewhat humid state of the atmosphere being for several hours less favorable to a minute inspection than to a general survey of her surface, they were chiefly devoted to the latter purpose. But shortly after midnight the last veil of mist was dissipated, and the sky being as lucid as on the former evenings, the attention of the astronomers was arrested by the remarkable outlines of the spot marked Tycho, No. 18, in Blunt's lunar chart; and in this region they added treasures to human knowledge which angels might well desire to win. Many parts of the following extract will remain forever in the chronicles of time

"The surface of the moon, when viewed in her mean libration, even with telescopes of very limited power, exhibits three oceans of vast breadth and circumference, independently of seven large collections of water, which may be denominated seas. Of inferior waters, discoverable by the higher classes of instruments, and usually called lakes, the number is so great that no attempt has yet been made to count them. Indeed, such a task would be almost equal to that of enumerating the 'annular mountains which are found upon every part of her surface, whether composed of land or water. The largest of the three oceans occupies a considerable portion of the hemisphere between the line of her northern axis and that of her eastern equator, and even extends many degrees south of the latter. Throughout its eastern boundary, it so closely approaches that