distinguished. What a tale of wonder will the traveller have to tell, when, after his perilous adventures, he returns to the bosom of his family!
It is obvious, that the results of M. Hansen furnish no positive evidence for the existence of lunar inhabitants. It is valuable to the advocate of a plurality of worlds, only in as far as it enables him to rebut the argument of his antagonist, when he points to the moon as a proof that his speculations are only a dream. He can now maintain, that if we knew all, we would find that the moon is not destitute of life.
While we write (1860), tidings are brought of the discovery of a new planet, and a new difficulty for the advocate of planetary inhabitants. Strange, that with so many professional eyes gazing day after day at the spots on the sun, it should be left to a provincial doctor in France, with the rudest instruments, to make the discovery of the little black pellet-like spot, which, by its form and rapid motion, indicated the transit of a new planet within the orbit of Mercury. The honour, after all, does not fall to the man of keen eyes, who detected this spot accidentally, but to the master-mind, who, by a finer sense, detected its existence, months before the results of observation were made known. Leverrier, in this case, as in that of the planet Neptune, was the intellectual seer.
