Lunatics,
as beautiful and as happy as angels, "spread like eagles" on the grass,
eating yellow gourds and red cucumbers, and played with by snow-white
stags, with jet-black horns! The description here is positively
delightful, and I even now remember my poignant sigh of regret when, at
the conclusion, I read that these innocent and happy beings, although
evidently "creatures of order and subordination," and "very polite,"
were seen indulging in amusements which would not be deemed "within the
bounds of strict propriety" on this degenerate ball. The story wound up
rather abruptly by referring the reader to an extended work on the
subject by Herschel, which has not yet appeared.

One can laugh very heartily, now, at all this; but nearly everybody, the
gravest and the wisest, too, was completely taken in at the time: and
the "Sun," then established at the corner of Spruce street, where the
"Tribune" office now stands, reaped an increase of more than fifty
thousand to its circulation--in fact, there gained the foundation of its
subsequent prolonged success. Its proprietors sold no less than $25,000
worth of the "Moon Hoax" over the counter, even exhausting an edition of
sixty thousand in pamphlet form. And who was the author? A literary
gentleman, who has devoted very many years of his life to mathematical
and astronomical studies, and was at the time connected as an editor
with the "Sun"--one whose name has since been widely known in literature
and politics--Richard Adams Locke, Esq., then in his youth, and now in
the decline of years. Mr. Locke, who still survives, is a native of the
British Isles, and, at the time of his first connection with the New
York press, was the only short-hand reporter in this city, where he laid
the basis of a competency he now enjoys. Mr. Locke declares that his
original object in writing the Moon story was to satirize some of the
extravagances of Doctor Dick, and to make some astronomical suggestions
which he felt diffident about offering seriously.

Whatever may have been his object, his hit was unrivaled; and for months
the press of Christendom, but far more in Europe than here, teemed with
it, until Sir John Herschel was actually compelled to come out with a
denial over his own signature. In the meantime, it was printed and
published in many languages, with superb illustrations. Mr. Endicott,
the celebrated lithographer, some years ago had in his possession a
splendid series of engravin