was all impatience to know the adventures he met with in the moon,
asking him fifty questions in a breath, but was most anxious to learn
if it had inhabitants, and what sort of beings they were.

"Yes," said he, "the moon has inhabitants, pretty much the same as the
earth, of which they believe their globe to have been formerly a part.
But suspend your questions, and let me give you a recital of the most
remarkable things I saw there."

I checked my impatience, and listened with all my ears to the wonders
he related. He went on to inform me that the inhabitants of the moon
resembled those of the earth, in form, stature, features, and manners,
and were evidently of the same species, as they did not differ more than
did the Hottentot from the Parisian. That they had similar passions,
propensities, and pursuits, but differed greatly in manners and habits.
They had more activity, but less strength: they were feebler in mind as
well as body. But the most curious part of his information was, that a
large number of them were born without any intellectual vigour, and
wandered about as so many automatons, under the care of the government,
until they were illuminated with the mental ray from some earthly brains,
by means of the mysterious influence which the moon is known to exercise
on our planet. But in this case the inhabitant of the earth loses what
the inhabitant of the moon gains--the ordinary portion of understanding
allotted to one mortal being thus divided between two; and, as might be
expected, seeing that the two minds were originally the same, there is a
most exact conformity between the man of the earth and his counterpart in
the moon, in all their principles of action and modes of thinking.

These Glonglims, as they are called, after they have been thus imbued
with intellect, are held in peculiar respect by the vulgar, and are
thought to be in every way superior to those whose understandings are
entire. The laws by which two objects, so far apart, operate on each
other, have been, as yet, but imperfectly developed, and the wilder
their freaks, the more they are the objects of wonder and admiration.
"The science of _lunarology_," he observed, "is yet in its infancy.
But in the three voyages I have made to the moon, I have acquired so
many new facts, and imparted so many to the learned men of that planet,
that it is, without doubt, the subject of their active speculations
at this time, and will, probably, assume a re