se crater, Nature, as you can see, has left no flat and empty
void. You can easily trace its special oreography, its various mountain
systems which turn it into a regular world on a small scale. Notice its
cones, its central hills, its valleys, its substructures already cut and
dry and therefore quietly prepared to receive the masterpieces of
Selenite architecture. Down there to the left is a lovely spot for a
Saint Peter's; to the right, a magnificent site for a Forum; here a
Louvre could be built capable of entrancing Michael Angelo himself;
there a citadel could be raised to which even Gibraltar would be a
molehill! In the middle rises a sharp peak which can hardly be less than
a mile in height--a grand pedestal for the statue of some Selenite
Vincent de Paul or George Washington. And around them all is a mighty
mountain-ring at least 3 miles high, but which, to an eye looking from
the centre of our vast city, could not appear to be more than five or
six hundred feet. Enormous circus, where mighty Rome herself in her
palmiest days, though increased tenfold, would have no reason to
complain for want of room!"

He stopped for a few seconds, perhaps to take breath, and then resumed:

"Oh what an abode of serene happiness could be constructed within this
shadow-fringed ring of the mighty mountains! O blessed refuge,
unassailable by aught of human ills! What a calm unruffled life could be
enjoyed within thy hallowed precincts, even by those cynics, those
haters of humanity, those disgusted reconstructors of society, those
misanthropes and misogynists old and young, who are continually writing
whining verses in odd corners of the newspapers!"

"Right at last, Ardan, my boy!" cried M'Nicholl, quietly rubbing the
glass of his spectacles; "I should like to see the whole lot of them
carted in there without a moment's delay!"

"It couldn't hold the half of them!" observed Barbican drily.

[Footnote D: BALTIMORE GUN CLUB, pp. 295 _et seq._]

CHAPTER XVIII.

PUZZLING QUESTIONS.

It was not until the Projectile had passed a little beyond _Tycho's_
immense concavity that Barbican and his friends had a good opportunity
for observing the brilliant streaks sent so wonderfully flying in all
directions from this celebrated mountain as a common centre. They
examined them for some time with the closest attention.

What could be the nature of this radiating aureola? By what geological
phenomena could this blazing coma hav