f responsibility, held possession of their hearts, as
they moved silently from window to window.

Their observations, recorded by Barbican, were vigorously remade,
revised, and re-determined, by the others. To make them, they had
telescopes which they now began to employ with great advantage. To
regulate and investigate them, they had the best maps of the day.

Whilst occupied in this silent work, they could not help throwing a
short retrospective glance on the former Observers of the Moon.

The first of these was Galileo. His slight telescope magnified only
thirty times, still, in the spots flecking the lunar surface, like the
eyes checkering a peacock's tail, he was the first to discover mountains
and even to measure their heights. These, considering the difficulties
under which he labored, were wonderfully accurate, but unfortunately he
made no map embodying his observations.

A few years afterwards, Hevel of Dantzic, (1611-1688) a Polish
astronomer--more generally known as Hevelius, his works being all
written in Latin--undertook to correct Galileo's measurements. But as
his method could be strictly accurate only twice a month--the periods of
the first and second quadratures--his rectifications could be hardly
called successful.

Still it is to the labors of this eminent astronomer, carried on
uninterruptedly for fifty years in his own observatory, that we owe the
first map of the Moon. It was published in 1647 under the name of
_Selenographia_. He represented the circular mountains by open spots
somewhat round in shape, and by shaded figures he indicated the vast
plains, or, as he called them, the _seas_, that occupied so much of her
surface. These he designated by names taken from our Earth. His map
shows you a _Mount Sinai_ the midst of an _Arabia_, an _AEtna_ in the
centre of a _Sicily_, _Alps_, _Apennines_, _Carpathians_, a
_Mediterranean_, a _Palus Maeolis_, a _Pontus Euxinus_, and a _Caspian
Sea_. But these names seem to have been given capriciously and at
random, for they never recall any resemblance existing between
themselves and their namesakes on our globe. In the wide open spot, for
instance, connected on the south with vast continents and terminating in
a point, it would be no easy matter to recognize the reversed image of
the _Indian Peninsula_, the _Bay of Bengal_, and _Cochin China_.
Naturally, therefore, these names were nearly all soon dropped; but
another system of nomenclature, proposed by