itizen of the Celestial Empire, some
of whose ancestors came from the nocturnal orb, who does not
know better than that. Perhaps the wisest course is to inquire within.
Have not we all frequently affirmed that we knew no more about
certain inscrutable matters than the man in the moon? Now we
would never have committed ourselves to such a comparison had
we not been sure that the said man was a veritable and creditable,
though somewhat uninstructed person. But our feelings ought not to
be wrought upon in this way. We "had rather be a dog, and bay the
moon, than such a Roman" as is not at least distantly acquainted
with that brilliant character in high life who careers so
conspicuously amid the constellations which constitute the upper
ten thousand of super-mundane society. And now some inquisitive
individual may be impatient to interrupt our eloquence with the
question, "What are you going to make of the man in the moon?"
Well, we are not going to make anything of him. For, first, he is a
man; therefore incapable of improvement. Secondly, he is in the
moon, and that is out of our reach. [*] All that we can promise just
now is, to furnish a few particulars of the man himself; some
account of calls which he is reported to have made to his friends
here below; and also some account of visits which his friends on
earth have paid him in return.

[*] Besides, as old John Lilly says in the prologue to his _Endymion_
(1591), "There liveth none under the sunne, that knows what to
make of the man in the moone."

We know something of his residence, whenever he is at home: what
do we know of the man? We have been annoyed at finding his lofty
name desecrated to base uses. If "imagination may trace the noble
dust of Alexander, till he find it stopping a bung-hole," literature
traces the man in the moon, and discovers him pressed into the
meanest services. Our readers need not be disquieted with details;
though our own equanimity has been sorely disturbed as we have
seen scribblers dragging from the skies a "name at which the world
grows pale, to point a moral, or adorn a tale." Political squibs, paltry
chapbooks, puny satires, and penny imbecilities, too numerous for
mention here, with an occasional publication of merit, have been
printed and sold at the expense of the man in the moon. For the sake
of the curious we place the titles and dates of some of these in an
appendix and pass on. We have not learned very many particulars
rela