pherds to these flocks, and even a
man with blue apron and rolled-up sleeves would have been a welcome
sight to us, if not to the sheep; but they fed in peace, lords of their
own pastures, without either protector or destroyer in human shape.'

In the meantime, discussion had arisen as to the lunar locality where
men, or creatures resembling them, would most likely be found. Herschel
had a theory on the subject--viz., that just where the balancing or
libratory swing of the moon brings into view the greatest extent beyond
the eastern or western parts of that hemisphere which is turned
earthwards in the moon's mean or average position, lunar inhabitants
would probably be found, and nowhere else. This, by the way (speaking
seriously), is a rather curious anticipation of a view long subsequently
advanced by Hansen, and for a time adopted by Sir J. Herschel, that
possibly the remote hemisphere of the moon may be a fit abode for living
creatures, the oceans and atmosphere which are wanting on the nearer
hemisphere having been (on this hypothesis) drawn over to the remoter
because of a displacement of the moon's centre of gravity. I ventured in
one of my first books on astronomy to indicate objections to this
theory, the force of which Sir J. Herschel admitted in a letter
addressed to me on the subject.

Taking, then, an opportunity when the moon had just swung to the extreme
limit of her balancing, or, to use technical terms, when she had
attained her maximum libration in longitude, the observers approached
the level opening to Lake Langrenus, as the narrator calls this fine
walled plain, which, by the way, is fully thirty degrees of lunar
longitude within the average western limit of the moon's visible
hemisphere. 'Here the valley narrows to a mile in width, and displays
scenery on both sides picturesque and romantic beyond the powers of a
prose description. Imagination, borne on the wings of poetry, could
alone gather similes to portray the wild sublimity of this landscape,
where dark behemoth crags stood over the brows of lofty precipices, as
if a rampart in the sky; and forests seemed suspended in mid-air. On the
eastern side there was one soaring crag, crested with trees, which hung
over in a curve like three-fourths of a Gothic arch, and being of a rich
crimson colour, its effect was most strange upon minds unaccustomed to
the association of such grandeur with such beauty. But, whilst gazing
upon them in a perspective