Richard Adams Locke

“ There are no "men in the moon." There cannot be, for they could not exist without air and water. 'Tis a pity, for the sight of this planet of ours, thirteen times the size which the moon appears to us, as fair, and bright, and shining as our nightly luminary, would be a sight worth seeing.
Science has made such progress, and common sense has so far kept pace with it, that the old idea that this was the only inhabited sphere in the universe is now completely exploded. There is no reason to believe that our planet is the only one in our solar system which is devoted to a useful career ”

“ It is the most beautiful night-piece that can be found in poetry. He presents you with a prospect of the heavens, the wear, and the earth; the stars shine; the air is serene, the world enlighten'd, and the moon mounted in glory. ”

“ Had the devotees of these temples gone the way of all living, or were the latter merely historical monuments? What did the ingenious builders mean by the globe surrounded by flames? Did they by this record any past calamity of their world, or predict any future one of ours? I by no means despair of ultimately solving not only these but a thousand other questions which present themselves respecting the objects in this planet ”

“ It is impossible to contemplate any great Astronomical discovery without feelings closely allied to a sensation of awe, and nearly akin to those with which a departed spirit may be supposed to discover the realities of a future state. ”

“ From the hour the first human pair opened their eyes to the glories of the blue firmament above them, there has been no accession to human knowledge at all comparable in sublime interest to that which he has been the honored agent in supplying; and we are taught to believe that, when a work, already preparing for the press, in which his discoveries are embodied in detail, shall be laid before the public, they will be found of incomparable importance to some of the grandest operations of civilized life. ”

“ Telescopes do not create light, they cannot even transmit unimpaired that which they receive. That anything further could be derived from human skill in the construction of instruments, the labors of his illustrious predecessors, and his own, left the son of Herschel no reason to hope. Huygens, Fontana, Gregory, Newton, Hadley, Bird, Short, Dolland, Herschel, and many others, all practical opticians, had resorted to every material in any wise adapted to the composition either of lenses or reflectors, and had exhausted every law of vision which study had developed and demonstrated. ”

“ This is made quite certain by the discoveries of astronomers. Rains, dews, oceans, lakes, bail, snow, clouds, are all unknown to the moon. Nothing shields its surface from the burning rays of the sun. Wherever the light of that fierce luminary penetrates the moon's surface is incessantly hot. ”

“ Of volcanic origin, the moon is true to its descent. It is full of volcanoes, most of which, however, perhaps from a conviction of the uselessdess of further action—there being nothing to destroy, and no one even to see their explosions are now silent and torpid. But they wrought out their destiny so long and so faithfully, that the surface of the moon is frightfully disfigured and uneven, Switzerland is a prairie compared to the smoothest part of the moon's surface. ”

“ Herschel directed his inquiries to the primary planets of the system, and first to the planet Saturn. We need not say that this remarkable globe has for many ages been an object of the most ardent astronomical curiosity. The stupendous phenomenon of its double ring having baffled the scrutiny and conjecture of many generations of astronomers, was finally abandoned as inexplicable. It is well known that this planet is stationed in the system 900 millions of miles distant from the sun, and that having the immense diameter of 79,000 miles, it is more than nine hundred times larger than the earth. ”

“ He was about to become the sole depository of wondrous secrets which had been hid from the eyes of all men that had lived since the birth of time. He was about to crown himself with a diadem of knowledge which would give him a conscious pre-eminence above every individual of his species who then lived, or who had lived in the generations that are passed away. ”

“ Frequently when attempting to pat our fingers upon its beard, it would suddenly bound away into oblivion, as if conscious of our earthly impertinence; but then others would appear, whom we could not prevent nibbling the herbage, say or do what we would to them.
On examining the centre of this delightful valley, we found a large branching river, abounding with lovely islands, and water-birds of numerous kinds. A species of grey pelican was the most numerous; bat a black and white crane, with unreasonably long legs and bill, were also quite common. ”

“ In those days there were animals and plants, but no human beings. Both animals and plants were like the age in which they flourished—to our notions monstrous, Monsters were the rule, both in the vegetable and the animated world. ”

“ The Palæontologist—the student of ancient life—has demonstrated, by evidence not to be disputed, that the earth had been inhabited by animals and adorned with plants during immeasurable cycles of time antecedent to the creation of man—that when the volcano, the earthquake, and the flood, had destroyed and buried them, nobler forms of life were created to undergo the same fiery ordeal:—and that, by a series of successive creations and catastrophes, the earth was prepared for the residence of man, and the rich materials in its bosom elaborated for his use, and thrown within his grasp. ”

“ In our catastrophes, too, we recognise theirs, and in our advancing knowledge and progressive civilization, we witness the development of the universal globe, and that each day and year of life is measured by its revolutions There are few who believe that the great luminary of the firmament, whose restless activity they daily witness, is an immovable star, controlling, by its solid mass, the primary planets of our system, and forming, as it were, the gnomon of the great dial which measures the thread of life and the tenure of empires. ”

“ The cliffs all along these shores were deeply undermined by tides; they were very cavernous, and yellow crystal stalactites larger than a man's thigh were shooting forth on all sides. Indeed every rood of this island appeared to be crystallized; masses of fallen crystals were found on every beach we explored, and beamed from every fractured headland. It was more like a creation of an oriental fancy than a distant variety of nature brought by the powers of science to ocular demonstration. ”

“ It is nothing but incessant mountain and hollow. Lunar Alps and Rocky Mountains intersect every few miles of the surface. The Himalayas would be unnoticed among the gigantic ranges which ornament the lunar superficies. And the projections, mighty as they are, are but trifling in comparison with the hollows. It would seem as though the moon, with apish weakness, had tried to imitate the earth in throwing off space for rivers and oceans —forgetting that it contained no water to fill the cavities. Astronomers have made the most extraordinary discoveries in reference to these lunar hollows. ”

“ Thou art the man!" Each philosopher anticipated the other in presenting the prompt illustration that if the rays of the hydro-oxygen microscope, passed through a drop of water containing the larvæ of a gnat and other objects invisible to the naked eye, rendered them not only keenly but firmly magnified to dimensions of many feet; so could the same artificial light, passed through the faintest focal object of a telescope, both distinctify (to coin a new word for an extraordinary occasion) and magnify its feeblest component members. ”

“ We scarcely ever knew a very ignorant person who would believe in the existence of those myriads of invisible beings which inhabit a drop of water, and every grain of dust, until he bad actually beheld them through the microscope by which they are developed. Yet these very persons will readily believe in the divinity of Matthias the prophet, and in the most improbable credenda of extravagant systems of faith. The Journal of Commerce, for instance, says it cannot believe in these great discoveries of Dr. Herschel, yet it believes and defends the innocence of the murderer Avery. ”

“ In order to learn, then, what is the constitution, and what has been or may be the probable history of the various worlds in our firmament, we must study the constitution and physical history of our own. The men of limited reason who believed that the earth was created and launched into its ethereal course when man was summoned to its occupation, must have either denied altogether the existence of our solar system, or have regarded all its planets as coeval with their own, and as but the ministers to its convenience. ”

“ The law of optics, that an object becomes dim in proportion as it is magnified, seemed, from its exemplification in this powerful telescope, to form an insuperable boundary to further disco reries in our solar system. Several years, however, prior to the death of this venerable astronomer, he conceived it practicable to construct an improved series of parabolic and spherical reflectors, which, by uniting all the meritorious points in the Gregorian and Newtonian instruments, with the highly interesting achromatic discovery of Dolland, would, to a great degree, remove the formidable obstruction. ”

“ On the contrary, the supreme wisdom of the Deity affords a fair presumption that this little planet of ours is but as a grain of sand among the worlds which have been created for the glory of God, and that each planet after its kind is fitted for the habitation of creatures whose office and purpose it is to thank and bless Him for their existence. ”

“ Herschel's Great Discoveries.—We are too much pleased with the remarks of the sensible, candid, and scientific portions of the public press upon the extracts which we have published relative to these wonders of the age, to direct our attention very severely to-day to that sceptical class of our cotemporaries to whom none of these attributes can be ascribed. Consummate ignorance is always incredulous to the higher order of scientific discoveries, because it cannot possibly comprehend them. ”

“ To render our enthusiasm intelligible, we will state at once, that by means of a telescope of vast dimensions and an entirely new principle, the younger Herschel, at his observatory in the Southern Hemisphere, has already made the most extraordinary discoveries in every planet of our solar system ”

“ We are assured that when the immortal philosopher to whom mankind is indebted for the thrilling wonders now first made known, had at length adjusted his new and stupendous apparatus with a certainty of success, he solemnly paused several hours before he commenced his observations, that he might prepare his own mind for discoveries which he knew would fill the minds of myriads of his fellow-men with astonishment, and secure his name a bright, if not transcendant conjunction with that of his venerable father to all posterity. ”

“ But although the rotundity of the earth presented no obstruction to a view of these astronomical objects, we believe Sir John Herschel never insisted that he bad carried out these extreme powers of the telescope in so full a ratio. The deficiency of light, though greatly economised and concentrated, still maintained some inverse proportion to the magnitude of the focal image. The advance he bad made in the knowledge of this planet, though magnificent and sublime, was thus but partial and unsatisfactory. ”

“ Those who have looked over a precipice a few hundred feet in depth may perhaps form some rude idea of what it must be to gaze down into a hole fifty miles deep—so deep that the bottom would almost escape the eye, were there an intervening atmosphere —a great, monstrous cave, with no vegetation either on the borders or on the top, or on the sides or on the bottom ”

“ The universal state of amity among all classes of lunar creatures, and the apparent absence of every carnivorous or ferocious species, gave us the most refined pleasure, and doubly endeared to us this lovely nocturnal companion of our larger, but less favored world. ”

“ It is quite proper that the Sun should be the means of shedding so much light on the Moon. That there should be winged people in the Moon does not strike us as more wonderful than the existence of such a race of beings on earth ”

“ It answered perfectly with a telescope which magnified 100 times, and a microscope of about thrice that power.
Sir John Herschel then conceived the stupendous fabric of his present telescope. The power of his father's instrument would still leave him distant from his favorite planet nearly forty miles, and he resolved to attempt a greater magnifier. Money, the wings of science as the sinews of war, seemed the only requisite, and even the acquisition of this, which is often more difficult than the task of Sisyphus, he determined to achieve. ”

“ Bound by the irrevocable laws of nature to the globe on which we live, creatures "close shut up in infinite expanse," it seems like acquiring a fearful supernatural power when any remote mysterious works of the Creator yield tribute to our curiosity. ”

“ Sir John Herschel's most interesting discovery with regard to this planet is the demonstrated fact that these two rings are composed of the fragments of two destroyed worlds, formerly belonging to our solar system, and which, on being exploded, were gathered around the immense body of Saturn by the attraction of gravity, and yet kept from falling to its surface by the great centrifugal force created by its extraordinary rapidity on its axis. ”

“ Had the force with which its substance was expelled from the body of the earth been less, it would have returned to our surface, just as those fragments of matter called aerolites do at regular intervals; had that force been greater, it would have entered upon the vast area which is the domain of the sun, and would have been attracted to that great cosmical body, and been fused by its intense heat. ”