to the moon. "Food groweth
everywhere without labour": this is a cheering prospect for our
working classes who may some day go there. "They need no
lawyers": oh what a country! "And as little need is there of
physicians." Why, the moon must be Paradise regained. But, alas!
"they die, or rather (I should say) cease to live." Well, my lord
bishop, is not that how we die on earth? Perhaps we need to be
learned bishops to appreciate the difference. If so, we might accept
episcopal distinction.

Lucian, the Greek satirist, in his _Voyage to the Globe of the
Moon_, sailed through the sky for the space of seven days and
nights and on the eighth "arrived in a great round and shining island
which hung in the air and yet was inhabited. These inhabitants were
Hippogypians, and their king was Endymion." [54] Some of the
ancients thought the lunarians were fifteen times larger than we are,
and our oaks but bushes compared with their trees. So natural is it to
magnify prophets not of our own country.

William Hone tells us that a Mr. Wilson, formerly curate of Halton
Gill, near Skipton-in-Craven, Yorkshire, in the last century wrote a
tract entitled _The Man in the Moon_, which was seriously meant to
convey the knowledge of common astronomy in the following
strange vehicle: A cobbler, Israel Jobson by name, is supposed to
ascend first to the top of Penniguit; and thence, as a second stage
equally practicable, to the moon; after which he makes the grand
tour of the whole solar system. From this excursion, however, the
traveller brings back little information which might not have been
had upon earth, excepting that the inhabitants of one of the planets, I
forget which, were made of "pot metal." [55] This curious tract, full
of other extravagances, is rarely if ever met with, it having been
zealously bought up by its writer's family.

We must not be detained with any detailed account of M. Jules
Verne's captivating books, entitled _From the Earth to the Moon_,
and _Around the Moon_. They are accessible to all, at a trifling
cost. Besides, they reveal nothing new relating to the Hamlet of our
present play. Nor need we more than mention "the surprising
adventures of the renowned Baron Munchausen." His lunarians
being over thirty-six feet high, and "a common flea being much
larger than one of our sheep," [56] Munchausen's moon must be
declined, with thanks.

"Certain travellers, like the author of the _Voyage au monde de
Descartes_