{non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman}  
{non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman}. OR, THE GOVERNMENT Of the WORLD In the MOON: A COMICAL HISTORY. Written By that Famous Wit and cavalier of France, Monsieur Cyrano Bergerac: And Done into ENGLISH By THO. StSERF, Gent.  
LONDON, Printed by J. Cottrel, and are to be sold by Hum. Robinson at the three Pigeons in Paul's Churchyard. 1659.   

To the Right honourable, the Lord George Douglas, and Lieutenant General Andrew Rutherford, and to all the Noble Officers in those two Renowned Regiments of Scots, in service of the most Christian King of France.  
Right Honble and Noble Gentlemen:  
I Have looked round myself, and find among all Noble Persons who preserve Honour and loyalty (in its splendour, as well as integrity) there is none so proper for my address, as your Noble selves: Were it otherwise, I should not step forth of our own Island; which though it have yet (blessed be God) many Heroical and Excellent Souls, yet their Liberty and Fortunes are so clouded and besieged by the iniquity of our distractions, that their Thoughts are took up rather to seek then bestow Protection. And (to lay my soul naked) I confess I do not send this Book to your Honours because I knew not to whom else to inscribe it; but I first undertook it, to testify to the world, how happy the name of Scotland is (even now when the waves seem almost to cover her) by the fame and flourishing estate of your Regiments. For though that Nation be eclipsed at home, yet she shines bright in France. Should I now offer to marshal particulars, who will pity me for falling short, when they see me enterprise things almost impossible? I confess I was so vain to entertain some such thoughts, and was beginning with the Great name of Douglas; but I found myself plunged in such a Gulf of Honourable Actions, as all my life would not serve for the History of that Glorious Family; because at all places and occasions, where the work is Magnificent, they are Jamais Arriere. 
* The Motto of the Douglases.   
I offered then at the noble Rutherford: but his vast Intellectuals (with the weight of his Acquests on the Austrian powers at Arras, Montmedy, grauling and other places) did so overpress me, that (without more Forehead than Wit) I could attempt no further. And therefore I sat down with this safe resolution, that it was little less than frenzy to grasp at all, when I saw the Principals were grown incomprehensible. You are so many, and there are so few Noble Families in Scotland to whom you are not allied, that to speak of you all, were to undertake the whole Nation. The Scots achievements in the French Wars are legible in all their Histories; and were it possible to be expunged, you would record it over again by your personal Actions. And (which is the grand comfort of nowdrooping Scotland) your two Regiments are the Nurseries of all future & succeeding Honour that belongs to our Country.  
As for myself and Book (I call it mine, though I be but its Translator) I made particular choice of this, as well for the subject-Matter, as for the Author. I see the world so shuffled here below, that I thought it safest to present the Government of a World above, drawn by the hand of Monsieur Bergerac, who was not only of your Profession, but also of your Army.  
My chiefest aim (next to my particular Devotion to your honours) is to mind the World, that the Lilies of France never flourish with more security, than when guarded by the Scots Thistle; for whose prosperity (especially in your Noble Persons) no man alive is a more absolute Votary, than  
Your honour's most Humble admirer, and most obedient Servant. THO. StSERF.   

A COMICAL HISTORY Of the WORLD In the MOON  
THe Moon was at the full, the Sky unclouded, and the hour of the night was nine; when returning from Clamard, not far from Paris (where Monsieur Cuigy's son, who is Lord of the place, had nobly treated some of my Friends and myself) the different opinions that Saffron-Circle caused, served largely to entertain us upon our journey: Fixing our eyes on that great Star, some took it for the loophole of Heaven; others protested, it was a French Platine whereon Diana smoothed Apollo's Bands; and there were some, who would rather have it the Sun, who having disrobed himself of his glorious rays, peeped through a hole, to spy what the World was doing in his supposed absence: and I said, I who am willing to mingle my enthusiasms with yours, do believe, without amusing myself with those sharp conceits with which you tickle the time into a speedier pace, that the Moon is a World like this, and by which ours is interchangeably believed a Moon. Some of the Company presented me with a loud laughter: May be, said I, now there is some one, who is as much jeered in the Moon for believing this Globe a World. But it was in vain to allege many grave Authors who were of the same opinion; it did but more efficaciously move their splenetic lungs to a louder merriment.  
In the mean time, this opinion (the boldness whereof) went half against my stomach; but confirmed by contradiction, plunged itself so deeply into my fancy (the rest of the way) that I conceived a thousand definitions of the Moon, whereof I could not well be delivered; so that striving to enforce this odd fancy, by almost serious Arguments, I wanted but little of being quite confirmed in my opinion; when by miracle or accident, Providence, Fortune, or what one may term a Vision, Fiction or Chimaera, or folly if you please, I was opportunely furnished with occasion for this discourse: for being come home, I went into my Study, where I found upon the table, a Book opened without my help, written by Cardan; which though I had no design to read, yet as it were forcibly, I cast my eyes upon a story of that Philosopher, who relates, that studying one night by a Candle, he saw two great old men come through the doors, though bolted; who after many Questions he propounded to them, answered finally, that they were Inhabitants of the Moon, and then vanished. I was so surprised, First, to find a Book brought thither of itself: Secondly, at the time and leaf, where I found it opened; that I took the connexion of Accidents, for an inspiration to learn mankind the truth of the habitable Moon: What's this, said I, after having talked of a thing all day, and a Book which may be the only one that treats so particularly of that matter, to fly from my Library upon my table, and be so far capable of Reason, as to open itself, just where so wondrous an accident is related; to have mine eyes as it were forcibly attracted upon it; and finally, to furnish my Fancy with reflections, and my Will with the designs I hold!  
Without doubt (continued I) the two old men which appeared to that learned man, have taken down this Book, and opened it in this place, that they might spare themselves the trouble of so long a conference they had with Cardan: But straight added I, I can never be fully cleared of this doubt without ascending thither. But I presently asked myself, Why not? Prometheus heretofore durst steal fire out of Heaven itself; Am I less daring than he? Then why should I fear a less favourable success?  
To these conceits (which may be perchance called the effects of a feverish distemper) succeeded the hopes of effecting this fine journey; so that I shut myself up in a countryhouse, distant from any resort, to accomplish my wishes; where having flattered my Fancy with some means proportionate to that subject, at last I resolved upon these for my Heavenly voyage.  
I had fastened about me a many small vials filled with Dew; upon which the Sun darting most violent Beams, the heat whereof attracting, as it doth the grossest Clouds, drew me insensibly above the middle Region: but as this attraction was somewhat too rapid, and in stead of approaching the Moon, as I pretended, I found myself further off, then at my departure; I began to break some of my glasses, till I found that my weight had mastered the attraction; so that I began to descend towards the Earth. I was not mistaken: for a little after I landed; and to reckon the hour I departed at, it should have been midnight; yet there I perceived the Sun in the height of the Horizon, which made it noon: I leave you to imagine how my astonishment was really so great, that not knowing to what I should attribute this wonder, I was tempted to believe, that in favour of my boldness, God had repeated that Miracle, and once more fixed the Sun to the Hemisphere, to give light to so worthy an enterprise: but what more amazed me, was, that I knew not the country where I was; for ascending in a direct line, as I thought, I did imagine, that I should have fallen just where I took my rise: yet equipaged as I was, I walked towards a kind of desert ground, from whence I perceived some smoke; I was hardly within pistol-shot, when I saw myself surrounded by a number of naked men; they seemed much startled at the rencounter, for I believe I was the first they had ever seen garnished with bottles: and to overthrow all interpretations might have been given to that clothing, they saw that in my march I scarce touched the ground; for they did not know, that with the least shake of my Body, the ardour of the Midday-Beams, drew me and my dew upwards; and had not most of my bottles been broke, I might have soared into the Air before their eyes. I would have accosted them; but in a moment, as if their fear had lent them wings, they flew into the next forest; yet I catched one, whose legs betrayed his heart: I asked him with a great deal of trouble (for I was quite out of breath) how far he reckoned it from thence to Paris, and how long people had gone naked in France, and why they so frightfully avoided me? This old man to whom I talked, was of an Olive-colour, who presently cast himself at my feet, and joining his hands behind his head, opened his mouth, and shut his eyes; he mumbled a great while betwixt his teeth, but I could perceive no distinct articulation; so that I fancied his discourse to be like the confused blattering of a dumb-man.  
A small while after, I perceived a company of soldiers marching towards me, to the sound of a Drum, some of which did separate themselves to take a view of me: when they were near enough to hear what I said, I humbly interrogated where I was: You are in France, answered they; But who the Devil hath put you in this condition? and how comes it, that we are not acquainted with your Worship? Are the Ships arrived? and are you going to advertise the governor? And pray why have you divided your Aquavitae into so many bottles? To which I answered, that it was not the Devil that had put me in that condition; that they did not know me, because they could not be acquainted with all men; and that I never knew that the River of Seine was navigable to Paris; that I had nothing to say to the Marshal de l'Hospital; and that I was not laden with aquavitae. Ho, ho, Blade, cry they, You're a merry Gentleman; the governor will go near to know you i'faith. Then they conducted me to their squadron by the arm, where I was given to understand that I was really in France, but with the addition of Novella: so that some while after, I was presented to the Viceroy, who inquired of my Country, my name, and quality; and after I had satisfied him in all, and related the agreeable success of my Voyage; whether he believed me, or whether he only seemed to believe me, however he had the goodness to command me to be lodged in his own Appartement: it was no small addition of my good fortune, to meet with a man capable of lofty imaginations, and who was not amazed when I said, that the world had turned about in the time of my elevation, being that I rose within two leagues of Paris, and fell as it were in a perpendicular line in Canada.  
At night, when I was just going to bed, he came into my chamber, saying, I should not have come to disturb your rest, if I had not believed that a man who had found out the secret of riding so much way in half a day, could not be ignorant of a means not to be tired. But you know not (continued he) the pleasant quarrel, which I have had about you with our Fathers, who will needs have you to be a Magician; nay the greatest favour they can allow you, is to believe you an Impostor: and in effect, that Notion which you attribute to the Earth, is a nice Paradox: and for my part I tell you truly, the reason why I am not of your opinion, is, that though you parted from Paris but yesterday, yet you might arrive as you did in this country without the motion of the Earth: for the Sun that drew you up by the means of your bottles might bring you hither, since (according to Ptolemy and the modern Philosophers) he hath that Circular motion which you attribute to the Earth: and what solid Reason can you give for the sun's stability when we see his motion; or for the rapid motion of the Earth, when we find it so firm under us? Sir, (answered I) these are the reasons (as near as I can judge) which tie us to this belief. First of all, Common sense obliges us to believe, that the Sun is placed in the Centre of the Universe, being that all the Bodies which are in nature, have need of that Radical heat; and that he inhabits the heart of the whole, that he might the radier satisfy each part; and that the cause of Generation is placed in the midst of all Bodies, to act with more equality and agility: So Wise Nature placed the Privities of man; the cores of apples in their Centre, the kernel in the midst of all fruit; and the onion conserves (with an hundred rinds) the precious germ, from whence ten millions of others must draw their Original. For this apple is a little Universe of itself; and the kernel thereof, hotter than any of the other parts, is its Sun, which casts round about it the conservatory heat of that Globe; and the Germ or sprout of the onion, is the little Sun of that small World, which doth warm and nourish the vegetive salt of that body: which being supposed, I say, the world having need of the light, the heat and influence of that great fire, turns round about it, to receive the virtues which conserves it, equally in all its parts: for it would be as ridiculous to believe, that great Luminous Body should wheel about a Punctum, which it hath no need of, as to believe when we see a roasted Lark, that it was turned by the Chimney: otherwise for the Sun to Carracole thus, would look as if the physician had need of the Patient; and that the strong aught to submit to the weak; and the great serve the little; and that in stead of a Ships coasting round an Island, the Island should turn about the Ship. If it be difficult for you to comprehend how so heavy a Mass can move; Pray tell me, are the Heavens and Stars which you affim so solid, lighter? nay, it is easier for us (who are assured of the World's roundness) to conclude its Motion by its Figure. But why must we suppose the Heaven's round, and we do not know it; and that of all Figures, if it have any other, it must want that motion? I do not reproach you, your Excentriques, nor your Concentriques, nor your Epicycles, all which you can but confusedly explicate, and I save my system; let us only speak of the Natural Causes of this Motion: you are fain to fly to Intelligences, which move and govern your Globes; but I without disquieting the most sovereign Essence (who without doubt, hath created Nature perfect, and with whose wisdom it must stand to have finished it; so that having accomplished it for one thing, it would not leave it defective in another) say, that the Beams of the Sun, and his influences, coming to strike upon it by their Circulation, makes it turn, as we do a Globe by a stroke of our hands; or as the fumes which it breathes from its breast continually on the side the Sun is of, repercussed by the cold of the Middle Region, breathes back upon their mother, whom they cannot hit but slopingly; by which means she is turned.  
The explication of the other two Motions, are less knotty: for pray consider a little:— At these words the Viceroy interrupted me. I had rather dispense with you for that trouble (for I have read some Books of Gassendi upon that Subject) but upon condition that you will hear what one of our Fathers answered me one day, who maintained your opinion; in effect, said he, I imagine that the Earth turneth, not for the Reasons which Copernicus alleges, but because the fire of Hell being enclosed in the Centre of the Earth, the Damned, who would fly the ardour of its flames, crawl up against the vault, and so turn the Earth, as a turn-spit Dog doth when he is shut up in a wheel.  
We were some while praising the zealous conceit of the good father; and in the end the Viceroy told me, he wondered much, that the system of Ptolemy (being so unlikely) should be so generally received. Sir, answered I, the greatest part of mankind, who judge by their senses, let themselves be persuaded by their eyes; and as he who sails in a bounding Ship, believes himself fixed, and that the land moves; so men wheeling with the Earth about the Heavens did believe that it was the Heavens that moved about them. To which we may add the insupportable arrogance of mankind, which fancies, that Nature was only created to serve it; as if it were likely, that the Sun, whose Body is four hundred and thirty times bigger than the Earth, should only have been lighted to ripen their Medlars, or enlarge the Sphere of their Cabbages: For my part (far from consenting to their insolence) I believe that the Planets are Worlds above the Sun, and that the fixed Stars are Suns which have Planets about them, which is to say, Worlds which we see not: from hence, because of their smallness, is the cause that their borrowed light cannot reach us. And in good faith, why should we imagine that such spacious Globes as those, should be uninhabited deserts; and that ours, because we live in it, has been built for a dozen of little proud things? Must we, because the Sun directs our days and Years, believe that it was only made, that we might not break our heads against the Walls? No, no, If that visible Deity give its light to mankind, it is by accident; as the King's torch may light a beggar, that's passing the street at the same time. But Sir, said he, if the fixed Stars are so many Suns, as you assure me, one may conclude from thence, that the World is infinite; being that it is probable, that the People of that World which is above a fixed Star, which you take for a Sun, do discover above them other fixed Stars; which we cannot perceive from hence, and that in this sort we may judge ad infinitum.  
Do not doubt it, answered I; as God could create the soul immortal, he could in the same manner make the World infinite; if Eternity be nothing else but a lasting without limits, and infinity an unbounded reach: and God himself would be limited, supposing the World not infinite, being he could not be where nothing is; and he cannot increase the World, without adding somewhat to his own existence, by beginning to be, where he was not before.  
We must therefore believe, that as we behold Saturn and Jupiter from hence; so if we were in either of them, we should discover many Worlds of which we are ignorant; and that the infinity of the Universe is thus formed. In-faith, answered he, you may say what you please, but I cannot comprehend this infinity. Why, pray, answered I, do you comprehend that Nothing, which is beyond it? No certainly, for when you think of that Nothing, your imagination represents it to you like wind or Air, and that's something. But infinity, if you do not comprehend it in general, you do at least in parts, being that it is not difficult to suppose to ourselves, other Earth, Air, or Fire, than what we just see; now infinity is nothing but an unlimited contexture of all these. But if you ask me, how these Worlds were created, since the Holy Scriptures mention but one of God's making: my answer is, that I dispute no longer; for if you will oblige me to give you an account of my imaginations, that stops my mouth, and makes me confess, that in such things, I shall always submit my reason to faith. He told me that his Question was to be blamed; but I reassumed my Idea, and added, that all those other Worlds which we do not see, or which we but imperfectly believe, are nothing but the froth or foam of the sun's purgations: for how could those great fires subsist, if they were not fastened to some matter capable of their nourishment? as fire rejects the ashes that smother it; or as gold doth separate itself in the crucible, when it grows to perfection, from the Marcasite which lessens his Carat; or again, as our hearts disengage themselves by vomit from the indigested humours which assault them: so those Suns every day disgorge, and purge themselves of all matter obnoxious to their fires; but when they have quite consumed that matter which entertains them, you need not doubt but they will scatter themselves about to seek a new pasture, and fasten upon the Worlds they have formed heretofore, and particularly, to the nearest: then those great fires confounding afresh all those bodies, will eject them higgledy-piggledy from every part as before; and so purifying themselves by little and little, begin to serve for Suns to those little Worlds they have created by the vomit of their own spheres; which was certainly the cause why the Pythagoreans foretold the general confusion. This is no ridiculous imagination; for this new frame where we are, produceth a convincing reason; the vast continent of America, is the one half of the Earth, which in despite of our Forefathers, (who had rounded the Ocean a thousand times) was not discovered. Neither was it any more than many Isles and Peninsula's, and mountains, which have swelled in our Globe, when the Sun hath purged himself of Rusts, which have been rejected, and condensed into bodies capable of attraction from our Centre, may be a little after in less particles, or may be all together in a mass: this is not so unreasonable, but that St. Augustine would have given his applause to it, if these countries had been discovered in his days; since he, whose genius was very clear sighted, assures us, that in his time, the Earth was flat like an Oven, and that it swam on the water like half an Orange. But if I have ever the honour to meet you in France, I will let you see by the means of an admirable glass, that certain obscurities which from hence seem spots, are Worlds that are framing.  
My eyes which were almost closed with the period of this discourse, obliged the Viceroy to leave me: the next day, and some other days following, we had entertainments of the like nature; but some while after, the troublesome affairs of the Province disturbed our Philosophy, and I revived my curiosity of visiting the Moon.  
Assoon as she appeared in our Nocturnal Hemisphere, I went musing up and down the Woods, my fancy still agitating my propounded enterprise; and at last, one Midsummer Eve, when they were at Counsel in the Fort, to determine whether they should succour the Savages of the country against the Europeans; I stole behind our habitation, to the top of a small hill; where you shall hear what I executed: I had framed a Machine, which I did suppose capable of raising me as high as I pleased; so that nothing of what I thought was necessary being wanting, I placed myself in it, and precipitated myself from a Rock into the Air; but because I had not well taken my measures, I rudely saluted the valley with my Bulk; yet all bruised as I was, without being abashed, I returned to my chamber; where I took beef-marrow, and anointed my Body; for I was mortified from the Noddle to the Heel: and after having fortified my heart with a bottle of cordial Essence, I returned to seek my Engine, but in vain, for certain soldiers who were sent into the forest to cut wood for the bonfire of that day, having found it by chance, had brought it to the Citadel; where after many explications of what it could be, and at last having found out the spring, some were of opinion that fireworks should be fastened unto it, being their rapidity, and the springs agitating its large wings, would elevate it mightily; so that none should see it, without believing it a fiery flying Dragon. In the mean time I sought it with all diligénce; and for a period to my labour, found it in the Market place of Lebee, just as they were giving fire to their squibs. The grief of finding the labour of my hands in so imminent danger, did so transport me, that I 'gan to seize the arm of the soldier who was to be engineer; I snatched his match from him, and flung my self furiously into my Engine, to dash in pieces the Artifice with which they had adorned it: But I arrived too late, for scarce were both my legs in, when I was snatched up in a Cloud: the horror with which I was surrounded, did not so much confound the faculties of my soul, but that I remember every thing that happened in that instant: for as soon as the flame had devoured one rank of crackers, which they had disposed by six and six, and a priming to each half dozen; another rank began to play the Devil, and another; so that the Salt-petre taking fire, did by increasing, avoid the danger: the consuming of the matter was the reason that the Artifice failed; and when I thought of nothing but leaving my head upon the top of some mountain, I found (without stirring myself at all) my Elevation continued; and my Engine taking a farewell of me, I perceived it to fall towards the Earth again. This extraordinary adventure did swell my heart with so high a joy, that ravished to see myself delivered from certain danger, I had the impudence to Philosophy upon it; so as examining with my eyes and thoughts, what should be the cause, I perceived my skin all puffed up and greasy, with the Marrow I had applied to the bruises of my last plunge: I found that the Moon being in the decline, and in that quarter using to exhale the Marrow of Animals, she sucked mine (with which I was anointed) with so much the more force as her Globe was nearer to me, and that no interposition of Clouds did weaken her vigour.  
When I had shot thorough, according to the calculation, I had more than three parts of the distance betwixt the Earth and the Moon; I found my feet turn over of a sudden, without any apparent jerk; nay, I had not perceived it, if I had not found my head loaden with the rest of my body: truly, I found that I did not tumble towards our World, for though I found myself betwixt two Moons, and that I noted, how I in going from the one, approached the other, yet I was certain that the biggest was our Globe; because that after a day or two's voyage, the distant refractions of the Sun coming to confound the diversity of bodies and climates, it appeared to me like a large Holland-Cheese gilded.  
This made me imagine, that I biased towards the Moon; and I confirmed myself in that opinion, when I remembered that I had but begun to fall after three quarters of the way; for, said I, that mass being less than Ours, it must follow, that the Sphere of its activity is of less reach, and that consequently I felt the force of its Centre later.  
In fine, after having been a great while falling, as you may judge; for the violence of my precipitation did hinder me from marking it; the last effigies of my memory was, that I found myself entangled upon a tree, with two or three large boughs which I in my fall had broken, and my face plastered with an Apple: so that you may easily guess, that without this hazard, I had been dead a thousand times. I have often made reflection since upon the vulgar report, which affirms, that precipitating one's self from a high place, one is suffocated before he comes to ground; and I concluded from my adventure, that they lied, or that by the means of that efficacious juice of the Apple which had watered my mouth, my soul was recalled, who could not yet be far from my carcase, which was tyte, and well disposed to the faculties of life: in effect, as soon as I touched the ground, my pain vanished, before it could be imprinted in my memory; and the hunger which I had sustained during my voyage, left nothing behind it, but a slight remembrance of having lost it.  
I was scarce got up, and had observed the largest of certain great Rivers, which finally compose a Lake; when the spirits or invisible souls of the simples exhaled in that country, came to regal my smelling; and I found that the stones were not hard nor craggy, but did carefully soften, when feet oppressed them: I straight lighted upon a star-like Platform of five Avenues, whose trees kissed the Heavens with their lofty Foresterial tops; sending my eyes post from their feet to their heads, and then recalling them the same way back, I was in doubt, whether the Earth bore them, or whether they did not rather hang by the Roots: their elevated fronts seemed to groan under the weight of the celestial Globes, and their arms stretched to Heaven, embracing to beg of the Stars the pure benignity of their influences, & to receive it in the bed of the Elements, before it had lost any thing of its innocence: there on every side, the flowers, without the help of any gardener, but Nature, breath so rich (though wild) a sent, that it would awaken the most dull, and satisfy the nicest smell. There th'incarnadine colour of a Rose, lolling upon the Eglantine, or the bright azure of a Violet lurking under the rushes, leave us no liberty of choice, but make us judge them both handsome. There the Circle of the Year's composed of an endless Spring; there no venomous Plant is bred, for its breath betrays its conservation, and the Brooks with a delightful murmur, relate their voyages to the Pebbles; there a thousand plumed Choristers fill the Forest with echoes of their melodious tunes; and the tottering assembly of those Divine Musicians is so general, that one would believe each leaf in the wood had assumed the tongue and figure of a Nightingale: Nay, echo pleases herself so much in their airs, that to hear her repeat them, one would imagine she had a great desire to learn them. On the side of this Wood there are two Meadows, whose continual greenness composes an emerald, which outlasts your sight: the confused paintings that the Spring bestows on a hundred little flowers, disperses their shadows into one another, with such an agreeable confusion, that one knows not whether being agitated with sweet Western winds, they are in chase of one another; or whether they fly the embraces of the wanton Zephyrus: Nay, one might take this Meadow for the Ocean, for it was like a Sea, which affords no shore to the sight; so that my eye frighted to have wandered so far without finding a harbour, I presently sent my thoughts to its succour, which did believe it the end of the World; persuading themselves that such delicious places were capable of charming Heaven to their conjuncture. In the midst of so vast and pleasant a Carpet, runs a silver Brook, whose shore is crowned with a verdant Bank, stuck with violets and Primroses, and a hundred other little flowers, that seem to crowd which should first behold themselves in that Crystal stream: it was yet in the Cradle, for it was but new born, and that young and polished Visage retained no frown; the large Circles it makes, in returning still to its self, show how unwilling it is to leave its native country; and as if it were ashamed to be courted so near her its Mother, it's murmuring thrust back my hand that would have touched it. The Beasts that came thither to quench their thirst (more rational than those of our World) seemed surprised to see day break towards the Horizon, whilst they might behold the Sun with the Antipodes, and durst not bow forwards upon the shore, for fear of falling into the Firmament.  
I must confess that at the sight of so many splendid things, I found myself tickled with those agreeable pains, they say, the Embryon feels at the effusion of its soul: my old hair fell off, to give place to other hair, which grew thicker, and was softer; I found my youth restored, my face changed to a vermilion hue; and my natural heat by little and little, to mingle with my Radical humidity; in fine, I retired into fourteen years of age.  
I had scarce gone a mile through a Forest of jessamins and Myrtles, when I perceived lying in the shade, something that stirred; it was a young man, whose majestic beauty almost compelled me to adoration; but he rose to hinder me, crying out, It is not to me, but to God you owe these humiliations. Sir, answered I, you see a person amazed with so many Miracles, that I know not how to repel my wonder; for coming from a World which you here without doubt take for a Moon, I thought that I was arrived in another, which those in my country call also a Moon; when I find myself in a Paradise, and (to appearance) at the feet of a God, who will not be worshipped.  
Except what you say of a God, whose Creature I am, the rest is truth; for this Land is the Moon, which you behold in your Globe, and this place you stand upon, is— For in those times the imagination of man was so strong, being not yet corrupted, neither by debauches nor the crudity of his sustenance, nor by the alterations of sickness; and he being excited by a violent desire of approaching this Sanctuary, and his Mass growing light, by the fire of this enthusiasm, he was elevated in the same sort, as some Philosophers have been seen, whose imagination was strongly fixed upon something, carried into the Air by ravishments, which you term ecstasies.  
The Woman, th'infirmity of whose sex rendered her weaker and less hot, would without doubt not have had th'imagination vigorous enough to overcome, by the contention of her will, the ponderousness of the matter; but being there was very little— The sympathy by which this half was tied to its whole, drew her to him as he ascended, as Amber doth a straw; as the Loadstone turns to the North, from whence it was digged; so he drew that part of himself, as the Sea draws the floods which are issued from her.  
When they were arrived in your Land, they inhabited the country betwixt Mesopotamia and Arabia; some people knew them by the name of—; and others, under that of Prometheus, whom the Poets feign to have stole celestial fire, because of the Posterity he begat, endued with as perfect a soul as that he possessed himself; so that to inhabit your World, this Man abandoned Ours: but the Most Wise would not permit so happy a Mansion without inhabitants, permitting some Ages after—: wearied with the company of men, whose primitive innocence was corrupted, was willing to leave them: yet this Person thought no place a secure retreat against th'ambition of his kindred, which was already at daggers drawing, about the partition of your World, but the happy abode his Great grandfather had so oft spoke to him of, unto which nobody yet had observed the way; but his imaginations supplied that, for as he remarqued,— He filled two great vessels, which he glued closely up, and fastened them under his armpits; the smoke presently (whose property was to ascend, and which could not penetrate the Metal) raised those vessels (and with them, that great man) into the Air: when he was come so far as the Moon, and had cast his eyes upon this fine Garden, an usual shivering with joy, made him easily see, that this was the blessed abode his Great Grandfather had so often mentioned to have lived in; he quickly unloosed the vessels which he had fastened like wings about his shoulders, and that so happily, that he was scarce four fathoms in the Air above the Moon, when he dismissed his Fins; yet this was high enough to have hurt him, without the great compass of his Robe, which the wind swelled, and so sustained him in a gentle descent to the Earth; for the two vessels, they flew to a certain place, where they have remained yet, and it is those which you this day term, The Balance—.  
I must now relate unto you in what manner I came hither; I believe you have not forgot my nurse, in regard it is not long since I told it you: you must then know, that I lived by the Bank of one of the famousest Rivers of the World, where amongst my Books, I led a life unreproved, although it glided away: in the mean time, as the light of my understanding augmented, so did my knowledge of what I was ignorant of before. Our Wise men never put me in mind of th'Illustrious madam, but I sigh at the remembrance of his high and perfect Philosophy; I despaired of ever acquiring it, when one day, after having mused a great while, I took a Loadstone about two foot in square, which I put in a small Oven, and after it was well purged, precipitated, and dissolved, I drew the attractive calcined, and reduced it to the bigness of an ordinary sized ball.  
After these preparations, I caused a Machine to be made of Iron, but very light, into which I entered; and being well seated in the seat, I cast my magnetic Bowl into the Air. Now this Machine which I had purposely made more heavy in the middle then in any of the extremities, was presently elevated in an equal balance; for the middle was the most efficaciously attracted; so that as soon as I arrived whither my loadstone had drawn me, I cast it up again into the Air. But Sir, said I (interrupting him) how could you direct your bowl so justly, that it did not fall on one side of your Chariot? I do not at all wonder at that, replied he, for the loadstone being cast into the Air, did draw the iron to it directly; so that it was impossible to mount on the one side thereof; nay, give me leave to tell you, that holding my bowl in my hand, I ascended, sin ce the Chariot itself followed the bowl that was above it: But the jerk of the iron, to unite itself to the bowl was so violent, that it made me bend double, so that I durst but once attempt this new experience. Really, it was a most admirable sight to behold, for the steel of this flying house, which I had carefully polished, did so dartingly and briskly reflect Apollo's beams, that I thought myself all on fire. In fine, after often flinging and flying, I at last arrived (as I doubt not but you did) to a condition of tumbling towards this World; and because in that instant I held my bowl in my hand, my Engine (the seat whereof pressed me to approach its attractive) did not forsake me; all that I now feared was, the breaking of my neck; to hinder the which, I now and then would toss up my bowl, so that my Chariot (stayed by this magnetic virtue) did mitigate the fall; for in effect, as it happened afterwards, when I perceived myself within two or three hundred fathoms of the Earth, I launched my bowl on all sides of the Chariot, sometimes here, sometimes there, till I perceived myself within a certain distance; then did I fling it up with all my force, and my Engine following it, I gently slipped on one side, to fall as softly as I could upon the sand; so that my fall was no ruder, then if I had fell my own height: I need not tell you the amazement that the sight of so many Wonders procured me, being it was so like that I lately beheld you possessed withal, &c.  
I had scarce tasted of it, when a thick cloud involved my soul, I saw not any one near me, and my eyes could not grow acquainted with the least tract in all the Hemisphere of my Voyage; and yet I forgot nothing of what had happened unto me: when I have since made reflection upon this Miracle, I did fancy to myself, that the fruit which I had bitten, had not quite rendered me brutish, for my teeth piercing it, found themselves moistened by the liquour, whose efficacy had dispersed the malignity of the rind. I was extremely surprised to find myself in an unknown country all alone: I gained nothing by eagerly viewing the fields about me, no creature presented me with the consolation of their sight: in fine, I resolved to travel till Fortune should direct me to the company of some Beasts, or the period of my days.  
She graciously heard my prayers, for within half a quarter of a league I met two mighty Beasts, one of the which stopped just before me, the other fled swiftly to its den (at least as I then thought) because I saw him return a while after accompanied with more than seven or eight hundred of the same kind, which environed me: when I beheld them near hand, I perceived they were formed like unto us; this adventure made me remember stories I had heard my Nurse relate of Sirens, Fauns, and satyrs; ever now and then, they raised such shouts (Caused I suppose by the admiration of my sight) that I believed myself almost grown monstrous; at last, one of these beastlike men taking me by the neck (as a Wolf that plunders a Sheep) flung me upon his back, and so carried me to their Town, where I was more confounded than before, when I knew them to be men; and yet I met not one, which did not walk upon all four.  
When these people saw me so little (for the most of them are twelve cubits long) and my body only sustained by two legs, they could not believe me a man; for they held, that Nature having bestowed upon man (as well as Beasts) two legs and two arms, they ought as well as they to make use of them: and in effect, when I have since made reflection upon this subject, I did not find this situation of the body very extravagant, when I remember that Children who have no other tutors than Nature, would march upon all four, and do not erect themselves upon two feet, but by the busy care of their nurses; who (to that effect) use little Chariots, and swath them in such sort, as they should not fall upon all four, the figure or aptest seat for the repose of our bodies.  
I have since demanded the interpretation of what they then said, which was, that I was certainly the female of the Queen's little Animals; so I was in that quality carried to the town-house, where I observed by their murmurings and postures, that they were consulting what I was: when they had a long time conferred, one of the burghers, who had the keeping of all the extraordinary Beasts, did beseech the Maior and Aldermen, to commit me to his charge, till the Queen should send for me to accompany my Male; which was easily granted him: who straightway carried me to his lodging, where he instructed me in many odd tricks, as tumbling, and making of mouths; and in the afternoons, he would fix a certain price at the door, for those that would see me: but the Heavens pitying my griefs, and angry to see the Temple of their Master profaned, permitted me one day, as I was tied to a chain (with which that cursed Mountebank made me whisk up and down to divert the company) to hear the voice of a man, who demanded me in Greek, who I was. I was extremely astonished to hear him talk there, as they did in our World; after he had questioned me some time, I answered him, and in fine, I related to him in general the whole success of my enterprise and voyage; he did consolate me; and I remember he said to me, Well, my son, in short, you must submit to the Errors of your own World; the vulgar sort here as well as there, will not be acquainted with what they do not understand: but know, that you are but justly served; for if any of this World had ascended into yours, with the confidence of styling themselves human, your learned men would strangle him for a Monster: after which he promised me to advertise the Court of my disaster; and added he, as soon as I heard the rumor that run of you, I came to see you, whom I found to be (what you said) a man of the other world, wherein I have heretofore traveled: for he had frequented Greece, where he was called the Spirit of Socrates; and after the death of that great Philosopher, he had governed and instructed Epaminondas at Thebes; after which (passing over to the Romans) justice obliged him to fix upon young Cato; after whose decease he dedicated himself to Brutus. All these great Persons leaving behind them nothing but the phantasms of their virtues; he had retired with the rest of his companions into Temples and solitary places. At last, said he, the people of your World became so gross and stupid, that I and my Companions lost all the pleasure ve took heretofore in instructing them: I believe you have heard discourse of us, for they called us Oracles, Nymphs, genius', Fauns, Foresterial Gods, lemurs, Larva's, Lamia's, Farfadits, naiads, incubus', Shades, Manes, Visions, and chimaeras: we abandoned your World in the Reign of Augustus; a little after, I appeared to Drusus, son to Livia, (who waged war in Germany) and forbid him to proceed. It is not long since I arrived the second time; within this last hundred years, I had a commission to make one voyage more: I have roved up and down Italy, and conversed it may be with some persons of your acquaintance: One day amongst others, I appeared to Cardan, as he studied, I instructed him in a great many things; in recompense whereof, he promised me, to leave to Posterity the knowledge from whom he learned those secrets he treated of in his writings: I visited Agrippa, the Abbot Triteme, Doctor Faustus, La Bross, Caesar, and a certain Cabal of young Fellows, who were vulgarly called, The Knights of the Red Cross, whom I instructed in a great many knacks, and Natural Sciences, which without doubt hath made them believed to be great Magicians: I was acquainted with Campanella; it was I that counselled him, whilst he was in the Inquisition at Rome, to frame his face and body to the ordinary postures of those whose interiors he had need of knowing, that he might raise in himself by the same figure, the thoughts that the same situation had raised in his Adversaries, and so that he might better manage their Souls, being acquainted with them; and he at my request began a Book, which he styled, De Sensu Rerum.  
I likewise frequented in France, La Mothe, Le Vayer, and Gassendi; the second is one who hath writ as much in Philosophy, as the other understood: I have known many more, whom your World call Divines, but really I find nothing in them, but a great deal of babble & senseless pride.  
In fine, as I passed from your country to England, to study the manners and disposition of the inhabitants, I met a man, the shame of his country, for it is a shame to the great ones of your World, to find so rich a virtue enthroned in one man, without adoring him: for, to abridge his panegyrics, he is all Wit, all Courage, and possesses all those qualities which speak a worthy hero: it was Tristram the hermit; really, when I beheld such great virtue, I apprehended it should not be acknowledged; wherefore I endeavoured to make him accept three little Vials; the first was filled with oil of Talk; the other with Powder of Projections; and the third with Aurum Potabile: but he refused them with as generous a disdain, as Diogenes did the compliments of Alexander: to be short, I can add nothing to the Eulogy of this great man, except, that he is the only Poet, the only Philosopher, and the only freeman, you have amongst you. These are the considerable persons I conversed withal; all the rest, at least that I knew, are so much below humanity, that I have known beasts something above them. Now I am not born, neither in your country, nor this; for my birth I owe to the Sun: but because that sometimes our World is overpeopled, in respect of the length of the inhabitants lives, and that it is almost exempted from Wars and Diseases; from time to time our Magistrates send Colonies to the World about them: for my part, I was commanded to go to yours, and declared Chief of the people that did accompany me: I since came to this, for the causes I told you; and the reason why I actually stay here, is, that the men are lovers of Truth, and that no Pedants are seen, and that the Philosophers will not be persuaded but by reason, and that the Authority of a Wise man, nor a multitude, will not confute the opinion of a Thrasher, if he reason as well as they: in brief, in this country none are counted mad, but Sophisters and Orators. I asked, how long they lived? he told me three or four thousand years, and in this sort continued.  
Though the inhabitants of the Sun are not so numerous, as those of this World; yet the Sun makes frequent emissions, because that the people are of a very hot temper, stirring and ambitious, and digest much: what I tell you, need not seem strange; for though that our Globe be very vast, and yours little; and though that we die but after two or three thousand years, and you in half an Age: Know, that in the same manner, as there is not so many stones, as clods of Earth; nor so many plants, as stones; nor so many Animals, as Plants; nor so many rational, as irrational Creatures: so there ought not to be so many Spiriti as men, because of the difficult conjunction of things fit for the Generation of so perfect a Composition.  
I demanded of him, if they were bodies like us: He answered me, that they were bodies, but not like us, not any thing which we did believe were bodies: for we vulgarly only called them so which we can touch; besides, there is nothing in Nature, but what is material; and though they be so of themselves, yet they were forced, when they would represent themselves to us, to take bodies proportionate to what our senses are capable to conceive; which was without doubt the reason, that a great many believed, that the stories which are told of them, was an effect of an idle fancy, because they appeared but in the night: to which he added, that being forced to form those bodies (they intended to make use of) in haste, they had not time often to accommodate them proper for above one sense at once; sometimes the Hearing, as the voices of Oracles; sometimes the Sight, as Fires and Visions; sometimes the Feeling, as incubuses: and these bodies being but condensed Clouds, in this or that shape, the light by its heat disperses them, as we see it dissipate a Mist.  
The explication of many fine things, gave me the curiosity of interrogating him about his Birth and Death; and if in the Country of the Sun the Individuum came to light by the ways of Generation? And if it were extinguished by the disorder of its Temperament, or the fraction of its Organs? There is too little alliance (said he) betwixt your senses, and the explication of these Mysteries, that you imagine, that what you cannot comprehend, is spiritual, or that it is not at all: but your consequence is very false, and it shows, that may be there is in the Universe a million of things, which would require in you a million of different Organs to be understood. Ay, for example, know by my senses the reason of the sympathy betwixt the loadstone with the Pole; and of the flowing of the Sea; and what becomes of a Beast after his Death: you cannot arrive at these high conceptions but by faith, because the proportions of these Miracles are unknown to you; a blind man may as well imagine the beauty of a pleasant Meadow, the colours of a Picture, or the streaked Rainbow; for he will fancy it sometimes palpable, as something of eating, or hearing, or a fragrant smell; in the like manner, if I should go about to explicate things to you, which I behold by senses you want, you would imagine it something that might be heard, seen, smelled, or tasted; and yet it is none of all these.  
He was in this part of his Discourse, when my Juggler, who perceived that the company was weary of my gibberish, because they did not understand it, and that they took it for a grumbling not articulated; he began to pluck the cord again, to make me leap and skip, till the spectators were satisfied with laughing; who affirmed, that I had almost as much wit, as the Beasts of their country; so they retired to their homes.  
The visits of this officious Spirit, were singular solacements to the hardships of my usage, for to entertain myself with those that came to see me; besides, that they believed me but for an Animal of the cunningest sort, in the categoric of Beasts; neither could I speak their tongue, nor they mine, and by that you may judge the proportions: for you must know, there are two Idioms used in that country; one the great ones make use of, the other is generally used by the vulgar: that of the great ones, is nothing else but different tones not articulated, almost like our music, when the words are not added to the Air: and really, it is an invention which is both useful and pleasant: for when they are weary with talking, or when they disdain to prostitute their throats to that use, they take a Lute or some other instrument, with which, as well as with their voices, they communicate their thoughts to one another; so that sometimes you shall have 15 or 20 of them in company, who will discourse a point of Divinity, or the difficulties of a Process, by the most harmonious consent of music that ever tickled the Ear.  
The second, which the Common People use, is by the motion of the Members, but not may be as we imagine; for some parts of the body signify a whole Discourse: as for example, the agitation of a finger, of a hand, of an ear, of a lip, of an arm, of an eye, or of a cheek; each will signify an Oration in particular, or at least a Period, with all these members; the rest do but serve to design the words, as a wrinkle upon the forehead, the several quiverings of the muscles, the reversion of the hands, the stampings of the feet, the contorsion of the arms; so that when they Dialogue with the custom they have of going quite naked, and their members accustomed to gesticulate their conceptions, they stir with such alacrity, that it is not like a man that speaks, but like one that trembles.  
My Spirit came almost daily to see me, whose excellent entertainment made me forget the rigor of my captivity: at last, one morning I perceived a man entering my cabin, whom I did not know; who having licked me all over, took me with his mouth up by the breech, and with one of his paws lifted me upon his back, where I was so easily and softly seated, that with the affliction that the usage of a Beast caused in me, I had no desire of escaping: and withal, those men that go on all four, are much swifter than we, seeing that the most indisposed of them, make nothing of running down a stag.  
But in the mean time, I was mightily afflicted to have no news of my courteous Spirit: and the first days Journey ended; and coming to our purposed lodging, I walked the Court of the Inn, whilst supper was making ready; when a young man very beautiful came smiling to my face, and casting his two forelegs about my neck, (after I had a while considered him,) What, says he in French, have you so soon forgot your friend? I leave you to guess at my astonishment; which really was so great, that from that time, I imagined all the Globe of the Moon that had happened to me, and all that I saw to be nothing but enchantments; when this beastlike man, who was the same I had rid all day, continued speaking in this manner: You promised me, that the good offices I did you, should never be forgotten; and yet you look as if you had never seen me before now: But seeing that I remained in my astonishment; in fine, said he, I am that Spirit of Socrates, who diverted you in the time of your imprisonment, and who, to continue my service to you, did take upon me the body which you mounted to day: But I interrupting him, How can this be, seeing that this day you were of an excessive long stature, and that now you are very short? That to day you had a feeble broken voice, and that now it is clear and vigorous? And that in short, you were to day an old rawboned man, and now you are a youth. How's this? As in our climates, we from our cradles begin a progress towards death; the Creatures of this World from old age retrace the steps of youth. Assoon as I had spoken to the Prince (said he) and had received order of conducting you to the Court, I went to you where you were; and having brought you hither, I found the bulk I inhabited so overcome with wearisomeness, that all its Organs refused me their ordinary functions, so that I inquired the way to the Hospital; which when I entered, I found the body of a young man newly expired, by a mad accident, and yet common enough in this country; I approached him, feigning to perceive some motion, and protesting to the assistants that he was not yet dead, and that what they believed had killed him, was nothing but a lethargy; so that without being perceived, I approached my mouth to his, and so entered him as through a trunk: then down fell my old Carcase, and I rose, as if I had been that young man, and came to seek you out; leaving the people, crying, A Miracle, a Miracle: Upon which, they came to fetch us to supper, and I followed my conduct or into a parlour richly furnished, but where I saw no preparation for the belly; so great a scarcity of meat (when I was ready to die with hunger, obliged me to ask him where the cloth was laid: I did not hear his answer; for at the same time three or four young Boys of the house approached me with a great deal of civility, and stripped me to my shirt: this new Ceremony did so astonish me, that I durst not ask the reason of my lovely Valet de Chambres, & I wonder my Guide, who asked me where I would begin, could get these two words from me, Un Pottage: But I had scarce pronounced them, but I found the odour of the most admirable bisk, that ever fumed into Dives his Nostrils; I would have risen from my seat, to find out by the scent, the Original of that favour, but my bearer hindered me; Where will you go? said he, we will go a walking by and by; but now it is fit to eat a little: make an end of your Pottage, that we may call for something else. And where the Devil is this Pottage? answered I, half angry) have you resolved to jeer me all this day? I thought, said my guide, that you had seen at the Town from whence you came, your Master, or some other at their Meals, which is the reason I did not inform you they said themselves here: being then that you do not know, I must tell you, we live here by fumes. The Art of our kitchens, is to shut up in Vessels made for the purpose, the exhalations which proceed from the Meat when it is dressing; and when they have ramassed many of several kinds and tastes, according to the appetite of those they treat, they open one vessel, and then another, and so till the company be fully satisfied.  
And if you have not been accustomed to live in this sort, you cannot believe, that a Nose without Teeth or Throat, could do the office of the Mouth, to nourish its Master; but I will let you see it by experience: he had no sooner ended, but I found enter into the parlour so many agreeable and nourishing vapours, that in less than half quarter of an hour, I found myself quite satisfied before we rose. This ought not, said he, to be any wonder to you; for you cannot have lived so long without observing, that in your World the Pastry-Cooks, who eat less than people of other Vocations, yet are much fatter; and whence do you believe comes their good case, but by the fume they are continually environed with, and which penetrates and nourisheth their Bodies? Now the People of this World enjoy a health less interrupted, and more vigorous; because that their nourishment engenders hardly any excrements, which are commonly the Originals of all Diseases. May be you were surprised, that they unclothed you before our Meal, because in your country they do not use this custom; but it is altogether the Mode here, that the fumes might the easier invade the pores: Sir, said I, there's great likelihood of what you say, for I myself have lately experienced it; but I must confess, that not being yet quite unbruited, I should be very glad to feel a bit grinded betwixt my teeth: which he promised me; but it was the next day; for he said that eating so soon after our Meal, would procure me an indigestion: we discoursed a while longer, after which, we went up into our chamber to take our rests.  
A man presented himself to us at the stair's head; and after having eyed us attentively, he brought me to a chamber, whose boards were strawed with Orange-flowers three forth deep; and my Spirit into another, which was likewise strawed with gillyflowers and Jessemin: he told me (when he saw that I wondered at this magnificence) that those were the Beds of that Country. In fine, we couched each of us in his Cabin; and as soon as I was stretched upon my flowers, I perceived by the light of about 30 Glow-worms which were enclosed in a crystal (Charon makes use of no other candles) those 3 or 4 boys who had disrobed me for supper, one of which began to tickle my feet, th'other my thighs, another my flanks, the other my arms; and all with such delicate wantonness, that in a moment sleep had mastered me.  
The morning beams had not wakened me, before they propitiously had lighted my guide to my chamber; who entering, said, I will keep my promise with you, of treating you more solidly at your breakfast, than last night. At these words I rose, and he conducted me by the hand, by the garden of the house, where one of the children waited our coming, with an Engine in his hand, much like our fowling-pieces: he asked my guide, if I would have a dozen of Larks, because Baboons (whereof he believed me one) nourished themselves with that sort of meat: I had scarce answered, Yes, when our Fowler discharged his piece, and twenty or thirty Larks ready roasted fell at our feet. 'slife there is a Proverb with us (Cried I straight) of a country where Larks fall ready roasted; sure the author came from hence: Well, Sir, do you eat; these people have the wit to mingle with their shot and powder a certain composition, which kills plumes ready roasted, & seasons the foul: I gathered some, with which, upon his word, I made bold; and really, in all my life time, I never eat any thing more delicious. After this breakfast, we prepared for our journey; and with a thousand mops and mews, which they use when they would testify any great affection, our Landlord received a piece of paper from my Guide: I asked him if it were an obligation for the payment of our reckoning; he answered me, No, for he owed him nothing, and that those were verses: How? verses, said I? are the innkeepers here very curious of Rhymes? Sir, said he, it is the money of this country; and the expense that we made here, amounted to a Stanza of six verses, which I now paid him: I did not fear overshooting ourselves in the reckoning; for though we should here epicurise a week together, we could not spend a Sonnet, and I have four about me, with two Epigrams, 2 Odes, and an Eclogue. I wish to God (said I) it were so in our country; I know many an honest Poet, that is ready to starve, and would make good cheer, if they might pay the treat in this money. I then asked him, if those verses would always serve if they were transcribed; he answered me, No; and continued in this manner: The author having composed them, goes to the Mint, where the sworn Poets of the Kingdom hold their places; there these versifying officers put the compositions to the proof; and if they be judged good Metal, they tax them not according to their prizes (that is, a Sonnet is not always worth a Sonnet) but according to the merit of the piece; so that when any one starves, it is a sign he is a blockhead; for people of wit make good cheer: I admired in an ecstasy, the judicious policy of that country; and he proceeded in this sort: There are others, that keep taverns at anothergessrate then there; for when one is going from them, they demand according to the proportion of the expenses, an acquittance for the next World; which when one hath given them, they write in a great Register, which they call the accounts of the great day, in this manner: Item, the value of so many verses delivered such a day, to such a one, who is at the sight of this acquittance to pay me out of the first cash he hath: and when they find themselves in danger of death, they chop these Registers into pieces, and so swallow them; for they believe, if they were not thus digested, they would be of no use to them.  
This entertainment put no obstacle to our making way, my guide going on all four, and I bestriding him. I will no more particularize the adventures of our Journey; but in fine, we arrived at the Town, where the King makes his residence: I was no sooner arrived, but I was conducted to the Court, where the Grandees received me with more moderate admirations then the people had done, as I passed in the streets; but they, as well as the people, concluded, that I was the female of the Queen's little Animal: which my guide interpreted to me; and yet he himself did not understand this AEnigma, and knew not what that little Animal of the Queens might be.  
But we were both quickly satisfied, for the King after having a while considered me, commanded it to be brought forth; and half an hour after, I perceived amongst a troop of Monkeys and Apes (who handed his ruff, Cloak, and Breeches, a little man entering, almost like to myself, for he went upon two legs: as soon as he beheld me, he accosted me, with a Criado de Vuestra Merced; and I retorted his salute almost in the same terms.  
But alas! they no sooner saw us tattle together, but believed they had guessed right; and it was impossible this conjecture should have a better success, for he of the Spectators that made the most favourable construction of us, protested, that our conversation was a grumbling, which our natural instant meeting together made us mutter. This little man told me, he was an European, native of Old-Castile, and that he had found a means by Birds to arrive at the Moon, where we than were; and being fallen into the Queen's hands, she had taken him for an Ape; for as Fortune would have it, they clothe their Apes in that country in Spanish clothes; and finding him at his arrival in that habit, she doubted not but that he was of the same kind. You may even as well say, answered I, that having tried all fashioned clothes upon them, they found none so ridiculous as those; and for that reason, they accoutre them in this sort, since these Animals are entertained but for divertisement: This shows, said he, that you know not our Nation, in favour of which the Universe produceth men, to afford us slaves, and for whom Nature cannot engender any thing, but subjects of laughter. After which, he entreated me to tell him, how I durst adventure to scale the Moon with the Engine I had told him of: I answered him, that it was because he had prevented my journey with the Birds I intended to use: he gravely smiled at this raillery; and the King about a quarter of an hour after, commanded the Ape-keepers to lead us back again, with an express order, to make the Spaniard and me lie together, that we might multiply our species in his Kingdom. They exactly executed his majesty's commands; of which I was very joyful, that I might have some body to entertain me in the time of my brutification. One day my Male (for they looked upon me as the Female) did relate to me the reason of his travels about all the Earth, and what at last obliged him to quit it for the Moon; which was, that he had not found one Country, where the imagination itself was free: for look you, says he, if you have not a cornered Cap, whatsoever you say, though never so witty, yet it is against the doctor's opinion, and you are an idiot, a Fool, and something worse: they would have put me (in my country) in the Inquisition, because I maintained to all the Pedants teeth, that there was a Vacuum, and that I knew no matter in the World heavier than another. I asked him upon what foundation he built so little received an opinion: Oh, says he, to compass it, you must suppose there is but one Element; for though we separately see Water, Earth, Air, and Fire, yet we never find them so perfectly pure, but that they are interchangeably engaged one with another; as for example, When you see the Fire, it is not Fire, but Air mightily extended; Air is but Water much dilated; Water is but Earth dissolved; and Earth itself, is but condensed water: and thus seriously to penetrate the matter, you will find it is but one, who (like an excellent comedian) plays all several parts, under all diversity of habits; otherwise we must admit as many Elements as there be sorts of Bodies. And if you will ask me, Why the Fire burns, and the Water cools, being it is the selfsame matter: I answer you, That this matter agitates sympathetically, according to the disposition it is then in. Fire (that is, nothing but Earth more dilated than when it is to constitute air) endeavours to convert to itself by sympathy what it meets with; so the heat of a coal being the subtlest & fittest to penetrate a body, slides through the pores of our bulk: and in the first place, because it is a new matter that fills us, it causes a breathing sweat, which sweat dispersed by the fire, converts itself into fume, and becomes Air; this Air being moreover melted by the heat of the Antiperistass or adjoining Stars, is called Fire; and the Earth abandoned by the cold and humidity which were ligaments to the whole, fall to Earth: Water on the other side, though it differs not from the matter of Fire, but in being more closed, it doth not burn us, because that we being closed, it sympathetically closes the body it meets with; & the cold that we feel, is nothing but our flesh rallying in a less compass, drawing with it part of the neighbour water of Earth; from whence it proceeds that those that are sick of a dropsy, convert all their nourishment into water; & choleric men change the blood their Liver creates, into Choler: suppose then that there is but one Element, and it is most certain, that all our bodies, each according to its quality, equally incline to the Centre of the Earth.  
But you will ask me, Why that Iron and other Metals, Earth and Wood, have a swifter descent towards the Centre, than a sponge; but that it is fuller of Air, which naturally tends upwards: but that is not at all the reason; and thus I answer you: Though a Rock fall with more rapidity than a feather, yet the one and the other have the same inclination for that voyage: as for example; a Cannon-bullet (if the Earth were pierced quite through) would precipitate more furiously towards its Centre, than a bladder filled with Air; and the reason is, that that mass of the Metal is a great deal of Earth crowded into a little compass; and that wind a little Earth in a large compass: for all the parts of the matter which are lodged in the Iron, being joined one with another, augment their forces by that Union, because being thus closed, they are a great many fighting against a few, since that parcel of Air equal to the Bullet in bigness, is not equal in quantity.  
Without proving this by a multitude of arguments; in good faith, How do you believe, that a Pike, a Sword, or a Dagger wounds us, if it be not because the steel is a matter where the parts are closer together, and more within one another, than our flesh, whose poriness and softness demonstrates, that it contains a very little matter spread into a large compass, and the point of the sword being an innumerable quantity of parts against a little flesh, forces it to yield to the strongest; as a well-knit squadron, will easily break a scattered Batallion? for, why should a bar of red hot iron cast a greater heat, than a log of the same bigness throughly lighted; but because that more parts are lighted, or burn in a little space, then in the wood; which because it is spongeous, includes a great deal of emptiness or Vacuum within it: and a Vacuum being nothing else but a privation of being, cannot be susceptible of Fire? But may be, you'll object to me, that I suppose a Vacuum, as if I had proved it, and that it is that we dispute of: Well then, I will now prove it to you and though that difficulty be the labour of the Gordion-knot, yet my arm is strong enough to become its Alexander.  
Then let that vulgar beast (who would not believe man to be man, but that it's told so) answer me: Suppose that there is but one matter, as I think I have sufficiently proved; How comes it, that according to its appetite or disposition, it restrains or swells? How comes it that a piece of Earth, by condensity becomes a stone? Is it that the parts of that pebble are retired one into another, in such sort, that where one grain of sand is lodged, in the same point or place, another can be intruded? all this cannot be, nay, according to their own principle, since bodies cannot penetrate one another. But this matter is got closer together, or, if you please, grown less, in filling some place that was empty before.  
To say, that it is incomprehensible there should be a Nothing in the World, that we in part are composed of Nothing, pray, why not? Is not the whole World encompassed with Nothing? since you'll grant that Article, confess that it is as easy for the World to have Nothing in it, as about it. I foresee you'll ask me, why that water, being restrained by frost in another vessel, should crack it, if it be not to hinder a Vacuum. But my answer to it is, that the Air above it, which tends as well as Earth or water to the Centre, if it find in its journey an empty place, presently lodgeth itself; if it finds the pores of this vessel, that is, the ways to this chamber of Vacuum too straight, too long, and too crooked, it by breaking it, satisfies its impatience to arrive at its Inn.  
But without troubling myself to answer all their Objections, I dare boldly say, that if there were no vacuum, there would be no motion, or we must admit penetration of bodies; for it would be ridiculous to think, that when a fly beats back with her wings a parcel of Air, and that parcel another, and that other another; and so by the stirring of a flea's little toe, there rises a bum behind the World. But when they can say no more, they fly to rarefaction: But in good faith, How comes it, that when a body scarifies itself, that one particle can be separated from another, without leaving an empty place? Must not these two bodies that were just now separated, have been at the same time, in the same place of this; and that in this sort, they must be all three penetrated? I expect you'll ask me, Why through a hollow trunk, a seringe, or a pump, they force the water up against its inclination? To which I answer you, It is by violence; but it is not the fear of a Vacuum that diverts it from its way; but being joined to the Air by an invisible conjuncture, it is elevated with the Air which holds it embraced.  
This is not very difficult to comprehend, when one knows the perfect Circle, and delicate contexture of the Elements: for if you attentively consider the slime which marries the Earth to the Water, you will find, that it is no more Earth, nor Water, but the interposers betwixt these two Enemies: the water and the Air reciprocally form a Mist, which penetrates the one and the others humours, to conclude a Peace; and the Air is reconciled to the Fire by an Exhalation, their Mediator. I believe he would have pursued his Discourse, but that our commons were brought; and my body being very hungry, closed my ears to his Discourse, and opened my mouth and stomach to the welcome meat.  
I remember another time as we were Philosophying, (for neither the one nor the other delighted to discourse of mean things) I am very sorry (says he) to find a wit of your temper, infected with vulgar errors; you must know, in spite of Aristotle's Pedantism, of whom all your Schools in France ring, that all is in all, that is, for example, that in Water there is Fire, and in Fire there is Water; in Air, Earth; and in Earth, Air; and though this opinion make your Scholars open their eyes as big as saucers, yet it is easier to prove, then to persuade them to it. For, I will first ask them, if Water will not engender fish; which if they deny, dig a pit, and fill it with water, which if they please they may strain, to avoid all blind Objections; and if in some time you find not fish there, I will be bound to swallow all the water you have put in't: But if any be found, as I do not doubt but there will; it is a convincing reason, that there is both fire and salt. Now to find Water in Fire, as I take it, is no hard enterprise; for let them pick out Fire that is most separated from the matter, if they please; as Comets, in which there is a great deal, since that unctuous matter of which they are engendered, converted to Sulphur by the Antiperistass that light them, if it should find no obstacle in its violence, in the humid cold which tempers and opposeth it, it would briskly consume itself like Lightning, Now that there is Air in the Earth, they will not deny; or else they never heard of the horrible earthquakes, wherewith the mountains of Sicily are agitated: And besides that, we see the Earth all vary, to the very grains of sand that compose it, and yet none says those pores contain a Vacuum: I hope then, they will not be angry, that I say, Air lodgeth there. Now I must prove, that in Air there is Earth; but I will scarce take the pains, since you are convinced as often as those legions of Atoms fall upon your head, which are so numerous that they choke arithmetic.  
But let us pass from Simples to Compositions, which more frequently furnish me with subjects, that all is in all, not that they change into one another, as your peripatetics tattle: for I will maintain to their beards, that the Principles do mingle and separate, and mingle again; in such sort, that what was made Water by the Wise Creator of the World, will ever be so. I will not (as they do) suppose a maxim without proving it. Wherefore take a Log, or any other combustible matter, & set fire to it; they will say when it is throughly lighted, that what was wood, is now become fire. But I will maintain the contrary, and that there is no more fire in't, when it is inflamed, than when it was first lighted; for what before the cold and humid part hid (and hindered to agitate) succoured by the stranger, that hath rallied his forces against the phlegmatic humour which choked it, and now possesses the field his Enemy before was master of; which he demonstrates without obstacle, triumphing over his jailor. Do you not see how the water flies out at the two ends of the log, yet hot and smoking from the Combat? The flame you see ascend, is the subtlest of the Fire, the most separated from the matter, and that which is consequently the most ready to return to its self; yet it unites itself Pyramidically to a certain height, the better to pierce the thick humidity of the Air which resists it; but as in mounting, it begins more and more to be separated from the violent company of its Landlords, it then begins to fly at large, meeting no more Antipathy to its passage: but this negligence is often subject to a second imprisonment; for voyaging separately, it sometime rangeth into a Cloud, where if the juncture be of quantities enough to head a vapour, they join, they grumble; and from thence they thunder, they lighten; and the death of innocents is often the implacable effect of the irritated Choler of dead things. If when it finds itself entangled in the crudity of the middle Region, and being not strong enough to dispute its liberty, or to defend itself; it straight abandons itself to the discretion of its enemy, which constrains it by its weight, to fall again to the Earth; and this unfortunate ranger being enclosed in a drop of Water, will be fallen at the foot of an Oak, whose Animal fire will invite this poor straggler to lodge with him; and thus he returns to the same Prison he had so lately broke. But let us examine the Fortune of the other Elements which compose this log: the Air retires to its quarter, yet mingled with vapours, because the conquering fire in great Choler did briskly expel them pellmell together. Now you see it the Winds Tennis-ball, serve Beasts for breathing, fills up the empty places Nature framed; and may be after all this, being condensed into a drop of Dew, it may be drunk by the thirsty leaves of the same tree, where our fire was retired, before the Water which the furious flames had extirpated from that Throne, elevated by the heat to the nursery of Meteors, will fall in rain upon our Oak, as soon as on another; and the Earth which was burnt to ashes, now cured of its sterility, either by the nourishing heat of scattered dung, or by the vegetative salt of some neighbouring Plants, or by the foecundious water of some River, this also may be near this Oak, which by the heat of its germ, will attract it, and convert it to a part of its whole.  
Now here you see these four Elements, which had the same destiny, which return to the condition they had some few days before quitted: so we may say, that in a man there are all things necessary to compose a tree, and in a tree to compose a man. And in this manner, all will be found to be in all: but we want a Prometheus, who would rob nature's breast, and render us sensible; which I am willing to call Materia Prima.  
These were the entertainments we passed the time withal; for this little Spaniard had a pretty wit, yet our discourses were all by night: for the multitude of people, which from six a clock in the morning till night, came to see us at our lodgings, would have interrupted us; for, some threw stones at us; other, nuts; others, grass: there was no talk but of the King's Beasts; we were every day duly served at our hours, and the King & Queen did often take the pains to feel my belly, to try if I grew big, for they burned with an impatient desire to have some of the race of these little creatures. I know not whether it was by being more attentive than my Male, to their Apishness and tones, but I learned sooner than he to understand their language, and to tattle a little; which made them consider us after another manner than they did; and presently the news run, that there were two Savages found, who for want of good nourishment, were less. than others, and by a defect in their parent's seed, wanted force in their forelegs to rest their bodies upon them.  
This belief began to take root, by spreading itself, without the Doctors of the country's opposition; saying, that it were a terrible impiety to believe, not only Beasts, but Monsters were of the same species as they: there were more likelihood (added the less passionate) that our native Beasts participated the privileges of humanity, and immortality, by the consequence of being born in our country, than a Monstrous Animal, who speaks of being born I know not where, in the Moon: and then observe the difference which is betwixt us and them; we walk upon four paws, because that God would not trust so precious a thing, upon a less firm situation; and he feared that going otherwise, there might some ill happen to the man; for which reason he took the pains for to seat him upon four pillars, that he might not fall; but disdaining to trouble himself with the fabric of these two Bruits, he abandoned them to the Caprice of Nature; who not fearing the loss of so small a matter, rested them upon two legs.  
The very Birds have not had such hard measure as they; for at least they have feathers to balance the weakness of their legs, with which they cast themselves into the Air, when we chase them; when as Nature depriving these two Monsters of two feet, have rendered them incapable of scaping our justice.  
After which, see how their head is raised towards Heaven; it is the scarcity that God hath inflicted them with of all things, which are so placed; for that supplicant posture shows, that they complain to Heaven of their Creator, and that they beg permission to accommodate themselves after our fashion: but we have our heads downwards, to contemplate the blessings we are masters of, as if there were nothing in Heaven that we need envy.  
I every day heard such discourses as these at my lodge; and in fine, they did so bridle the people's opinion, concerning this Article, that it was decreed, I should at most but pass for a parrot without feathers; for they confirmed those that were already persuaded, that like a bird, I had but two legs; which was the reason they put me in a Cage, by the express order of the Privy-Council.  
Where every day the Queen's Bird-keeper had the care of teaching me to whistle, as they do here your Stares or blackbirds. Indeed I was happy in not wanting food: in the mean time, among the Sonnets with which my Spectators daily broke my head, I learned to speak as they did: in short, when I had past the difficulty of expressing my thoughts, I related fine conceits: the companies already entertained themselves with nothing, but the gentleness of my words; and the esteem they had of my wit, arrived to that point, that the Council was forced to publish an Edict, by which it was forbidden to believe, that I had any Reason; with an express commandment to all persons, of what quality or condition soever, not to imagine, but that it was by instinct, whatsoever I did, though never so rational.  
In the interim, the definition of what I was, divided the Town in two parts; that which was of my faction, grew greater and greater every day: and in fine, in spite of the Anathema wherewith they frighted the multitude, those that held with me, demanded an Assembly of State to end this controversy. They were a great while about the choice of who should judge the business. But the Arbiters pacified their animosity, by equalling the number of both interests, who ordained, I should be brought into the Assembly as, I was: But I was treated as severely as you can imagine; my Examiners amongst other things, questioned me in Philosophy: I sincerely told them, what heretofore my Regent had taught me; but they made nothing of confuting me with more powerful reasons: so that not being able to answer them, I alleged the tenants or Principles of Aristotle; which stood me in no more stead, than my Sophisms had done: for in two words, they discovered to me the falseness of them.  
This Aristotle, said they, (whose Science you so largely boast) did without doubt accommodate his Principles to his Philosophy, instead of accommodating his Philosophy to his Principles; and at least, he ought to have proved them more reasonable than those of other Sects, which you have mentioned to us.  
When the Arbiters (answers she) chosen by consent of both parties, have designed the Time accorded for the levying of their forces, that of the March, the number of Combatants, the day and the place appointed for Battle, & all this with so much equality, that there is not one single man more in one Army, then in the other; the maimed Soldiers of one side, are all in one Company; and when they come to join, the Marshals of the field have a care to expose them to the maimed of the other side: The giant's encounter Colosses; Fencers, those that are expert in their weapons; the valiant, the courageous; those that are debilitated, the weak; the indisposed, the sick; and the robustious meet those that are strong; and if any one happens to strike another than his designed enemy, without he can prove it a mistake, is condemned for a Coward: after the Battle is ended, they number the wounded, the dead, and the prisoners; for there are no fliers: if their loss be found equal, they draw cuts who shall be proclaimed victorious.  
But though one Kingdom had defeated their Enemy in a lawful war, yet there is hardly any thing advanced; for there be other Armies, less in number, of Learned and Wise men, of whose disputations, depends wholly the Triumph or Servitude of their States.  
One learned man is opposed to another learned man, and one wit to another wit; one Judicious man, to another Judicious Enemy: and in fine, a Triumph gained in this War, is reckoned as three victories by open force. After the Proclamation of the Victory, the Assembly is broke, and the Victorious Nation choose for their King, either their Enemies, or their former.  
I could not forbear laughing, at this scrupulous way of combating; and I alleged for an example a stronger Policy, the customs of our Europeans, where a Monarch will wave no occasions to overcome his Enemy: to which she thus answered me.  
Pray tell me, if your Princes do not pretend Right, for their levying of Arms: Yes, answered I, and a great deal of Justice in their cause. Why then, continued she, don't they choose Arbiters unsuspected of partiality? and if they be found to have as much in the one as the other, let them remain as they were, or play a game at Pickquet, for the Town or Province which bred the dispute.  
But why have you so many circumstances in your way of Fighting? Is it not sufficient, that the Armies are composed of equal numbers? You have not much judgement, answered she. Why, do you really believe, if you had overcome your Enemy hand to hand in the open field, if you were in a coat of Male, and he naked; if he had but a Dagger, and you a Tuck; in fine, if he were deprived of Arms, and you had both yours; that he were truly vanquished? in the mean while, with all the equality you so much recommend in your Gladiators, yet they never fight upon equal terms: for the one will be a tall, the other a little man; the one a skilful, the other may be never handled a sword; the one robustious, and the other weak: nay, when all these disproportions should be equalised, that they were as skilful, or as strong one as the other, may be, yet there would be a disadvantage on the one side; for, the one may have more courage than the other; by which reason this rash man will not consider the danger, being that he may be choleric, that he may have more blood, and that he may have a more contracted heart, with all the qualities which create courage; as if that, as well as a sword, were not a weapon his Enemy wanted. He furiously frights the opponent, with desperately casting himself upon him, and takes away the life of this poor man, who foresees the danger, and whose heat is stifled in phlegm, and whose Heart is too copious to unite the Spirits necessary to dissipate that Ice, which is called cowardice. And now you praise this man for having killed his Enemy advantageously; and praising his rashness, you praise a sin against Nature, since such boldness tends to its destruction: and in order to what we are talking of, some few years since, there was a Remonstrance made to the Council of war, to invent some more circumspect conscientious rule for combats; and the Philosopher who gave this advice, spoke in this manner:  
You imagine, Sirs, that you have equalised the advantages of both parties, having chose them, both great, both expert, and both full of courage; but this is not enough, since that in the end the Victor must overcome by address, by force and fortune: if it be by address, he without doubt, struck his Adversary where he did not expect it, or quicker than it was likely; or feigning to hit him on the one side, struck him on the other; and in the mean time, all this is cunning treachery, cozenage; and cozenage and treachery are not the compounds of a Gallant man: if he have Triumphed forceably, will you esteem his Enemies overcome, because he was violated? No sure, no more than you would judge that man overcome, who by the overwhelming of a Mountain, was made incapable of gaining the victory; so he was overcome, because at that time he was not disposed to resist the violence of his Adversary: if it be by hazard that he overthrow him, it is fortune we ought to crown, he contributed nothing; and in fine, the vanquished is no more to be blamed, than he that with three Dice, throwing seventeen, yet lost by their all running sixes.  
They all confessed he was in the right, but that it was impossible, according to human appearances, to remedy it, and that it was better to submit to a little inconvenience, then abandon themselves to a hundred greater importances.  
She did not entertain me this time any longer, because she was fearful of being found so early alone with me: It is not, that impudicity is there a crime; quite contrary, except convinced Malefactors, all men have power over all Women, and in the same manner, a Woman may sue a man, who had refused: but she durst not publicly frequent me, because some of the Council had said in the last Assembly, that it was chiefly the Women, that published that I was a man, cloaking with that pretext, the desire they had of prostituting themselves to beasts, & shamelessly with me, to commit sins against nature; which was the reason that I was a great while without seeing her, or any of her sex. In the mean while some had renewed the doubt of what I was; for when I thought of nothing but dying in my Cage, they came to fetch me once more to give me audience: I was then interrogated in the presence of a great many Courtiers, upon some point of Moral Philosophy; and my Answers, as I believe, did something satisfy them, for he that did proceed, did largely expound to me his opinions concerning the Structure of the World. They seemed very ingenious to me; and if he had not proceeded to its Origine, which he held Eternal, I had believed his Philosophy much more reasonable than ours. But as soon as I heard him sustain an imagination so contrary to our faith, I quite broke with him, at which he only laughed; which obliged me to say, that since they proceeded so far, I began to believe that their World was but a Moon; but say they all, You see Earth, Rivers, and Seas, and what can all this be? No matter, said I, Aristotle assures us, that it is but a Moon; and if you had said the contrary in the Schools where I was brought up, they would have hissed at you: at which they all burst into a great laughter; you need not ask, if it were out of ignorance; but in the mean time I was conducted to my Cage.  
But other Wits, more transported than these, who were advertised that I durst say, the Moon from whence I came was a World, and that their World was a Moon; did believe, that this would furnish them with pretext enough to condemn me to the water; which is their manner of exterminating people that are so impious. Wherefore they in a body went to make their complaint to the King, who promised them justice, and ordered me to be brought again before the Court.  
I was then uncaged the third time, and the most Ancient began to plead against me: I do not well remember his Speech, because I was too much frighted, to receive the notes of his Voice without disorder; as also, because he made use of an instrument to declaim with, which deafened me: it was a trumpet which he had chosen, because the violence of that Martial sound, should excite them to my death, and so to hinder by that emotion of their Spirits, that reason should not act her part; as it happens in our Armies, where the noise of the Drums and Trumpets hinders the Soldiers from reflecting upon the importance of their lives. When he had done, I rose up to defend my cause; but I was delivered by an accident, which will surprise you: As I had just opened my mouth to speak, a man who with much ado had past through the crowd of the people, came and cast himself at the King's feet, and rolled himself a great while upon his back in his presence. This action did not at all surprise me, for I knew it was the posture they put themselves in, when they would discourse in public; I only forgot my own speech, to listen the more attentively to his.  
O ye Just, said he, hear me: You cannot condemn this man, this Ape, or this Parrot, for saying that the Moon from whence he comes, is a World; for if he be a man, though he be not come from the Moon, since all men are free, is not he free to imagine what he pleaseth? What, can you constrain him, not to have Visions as well as you? You may force him to say, the Moon is no World, but not to believe so: for, to believe a thing, there must certain possibilities present themselves to one's imagination, more inclining to the Yea, then to the Nay; and except you furnish him with those likelihoods, or that they unforced offer themselves to his Reason, he may tell you, that he believes it, though he never doth.  
Now I will demonstrate to you, that you ought not to condemn him, if you place him in the Catalogue of Beasts; for, suppose him a creature without Reason, could you pretend to any yourselves, if you should condemn him for sinning against it? He said, that the Moon was a world; now Beasts only acting by instinct of Nature, it is Nature says it, and not he; and to believe that wise Nature, who hath made the World and the Moon, should not know what it is herself; and that you who derive all your knowledge from her, should more certainly know it, were very ridiculous. But if your passion should make you deny your Principles, & that you should suppose that Nature did not only guide Beasts, at least blush at inquietudes which are caused in you, by the capriciousness of a Beast: really, Sirs, I believe if you saw a man of ripe years busy himself with the politic Government of Pismires, sometimes in striking one who had overthrown his companion; another time in imprisoning another, for the theft of a barleycorn from his neighbour; then to arraign another, for quitting her eggs; you would believe him mad, to trouble himself with matters so much below him, and to pretend to reduce to Reason, Animals that never had any: How then will you defend, most Venerable Assembly, the interest you take in the capriciousness of this little Animal? Ye Just, I have said.  
Assoon as he had ended, a certain Musical applause made the hall ring; and after all their opinions had for a quarter of an hour had disputed, the King pronounced,  
That hereafter I should be censured a man, and as such set at liberty, and that the punishment of drowning, should be reduced into an ignominious forfeit; for in that country there are no honourable ones; by which forfeit I was obliged to unsay publicly, that the Moon was a World, because of the scandal it might have caused by the newness of the opinion in weak Spirits.  
This sentence being pronounced, they lifted me out of the Palace, and clothed me most richly, though scornfully; they carried me upon the Tribunal of a sumptuous Chariot, in which I was drawn by four yoked Princes, and they made me pronounce this in all the public places of the town:  
People, I declare to you, that this Moon is not a Moon, but a World, and that the World below, is no World, but a Moon: this is what the Council thinks fit you should believe. After I had cried this in the five great places of the City, I perceived my Advocate, who presented me his hand to lift me down: I wondered very much to find him; when I had well weighed him, that it was my courteous Spirit, we were an hour in embracing one another: Come, come to my house, says he; for to return to Court after a shameful sentence, were to make yourself be looked upon with an ill eye; and I must tell you, that you had still remained amongst the Apes and Monkeys, as the Spaniard doth, if I had not in all Companies, published the vigour and force of your understanding, and laboured in despite of your Enemies, the Protection of the great Ones for you.  
The period of my thanks was also that of our journey, for we were then entering his doors: he entertained me till suppertime, with all the devices he had used to force my Enemies, in despite of their most specious pretexts with which they had gulled the people, to desist from so unjust a prosecution: but when we were told that they had served in supper, he advertised me, that he had invited two Professors of the Academy to keep me company: I will make them fall, said he, upon the Philosophy which is taught in this World, by which means you shall see the Son of our Landlord; it is a young man, as full of wit, as I ever met any; he would be a second Socrates, if he could govern his Lights, and not bury in vice, the Graces with which God continually visits him; for he affects a Libertining, by a Chimerical ostentation, to acquire the reputation of a Wit: I took my lodging here, to spy out the occasion of instructing him; he held his tongue, to leave me in my Cue, the liberty of talking: then he made a sign that they should disrobe me of my shameful Ornaments, with which I still glisteren; which was no sooner effected, but the two Professors entered, and we went to sit down where the cloth was spread, where we found the youth he talked of, already at his meal: they saluted him profoundly, and used him with an high respect, as a slave useth his Lord and Master: I demanded the the cause, of my Spirit; who said, it was because of his age; because that in that World, the aged bear all sort of respect to the young; nay more, Parents obeyed their children, as soon as by the advice of the Synod of Philosophers, they had attained to Reason. You wonder, said he, at a custom so contrary to that of your country, but it is not at all repugnant to Reason; for in your Conscience, is not a young man, who is hot in the force of imagination, of judgement, and execution, fitter to govern a Family, than an infirm bundle of threescore years, besotted, whose imagination is frozen by threescore winters, and who governs himself but by what you call Experience of happy successes, which in the mean while, are but mere effects of hazard, against all rules and economy of human Prudence? For judgement there is also as little, though the People of your World make an Idol of old Age. But to disabuse them, they must know, that what is called Prudence in an old man, is nothing but a pannical apprehension, and a mad fear of acting nothing but what they have already seen done: so that when he doth not hazard a danger, where a young man had lost himself, it is not that he forejudged the Catastrophe, but that he wanted fire to warm the noble parts, which make us dare; whereas the boldness of that young man was as a pledge of the efficaciousness of his design, because that order which makes the promptitude and facility of an execution, was that which thrust him upon that enterprise. For execution, I should wrong your judgement, if I went about to convince you with proofs; you know, youth only is fit for action; which will enough persuade you to it: Pray tell me, why do you respect a courageous man, but because he can avenge your injuries, and repel your oppressors? and is it for any consideration, but mere habit, that you consider him where a Battalion of seventy Januaries hath frozen his blood, and killed with cold all the noble Enthusiasms that young men are warmed with? when you yield to the stronger, is it not because that he should be obliged to you, when you know you can no longer dispute the victory with him? But why should you submit to him, when idleness hath melted his muscles, debilitated his arteries, evaporated his Spirits, and dried the marrow in his bones? If you adored a woman, would it not be because of her Beauty? But to continue your adorations when old age had made her a Phantasm, which represents nothing but the hideous picture of Death, were very strange. In fine, when you love a man of Spirit, it is because by the vivacity of his Genius, he penetrates into a turbulent business, and straight untangles it; that he can defray by his good words the Assembly of the richest Carat, and that he could digest the Sciences in one thought: and yet you would continue your esteem, when his worm-Organs split his weak noddle, heavy and inopportune to good company, and when he rather resembles a Fairy Deity, than a reasonable man. By which (my son) you may conclude, it is fitter young men should manage the government of Families then old; and the rather, because that according to your maxims, Hercules, Achilles, Epaminondas, Alexander, and Caesar, the most of which died before fifty years of age, should have merited no honours, being by your account too young; when their youth was the only cause of their admirable actions, which a more advanced age would have frustrated, because it would have wanted ardour and promptitude, the Authors of such high Successes. You say true, all the Laws of our World, loudly proclaim the respect we owe old Age; for those that introduced those Laws, were old men; who justly feared, that the young men should depose them from their usurped Authority.  
You owe nothing to your mortal Architecture but your Body; your Soul comes from Heaven, and it was in the power of hazard, to have created your father your son, as you now are his: Nay, how do you know, but that he hath debarred you the inheritance of a Diadem? May be your Soul departed Heaven with a design of inhabiting the King of the Romans, in the belly of the Empress, where may be to shorten her journey, she lodged: No, no, God would not have blotted you out of the calculation he made of mankind, though your father had died a little boy: but who knows if you had not been the work of some great Captain, who would have associated you with his Glory, as well as his goods? so that you are no more obliged to your father for the life he gave you, than you would be to a Pirate, who should chain you to the Bank, that he might there feed you: Nay, I will suppose he had engendered you a Prince of King; a Present loses its merit, when it is not left in the receivers choice of receiving it or no; Death was given to Caesar and to Cassius, and Cassius was obliged to the slave of whom he begged it; so was not Caesar to his murderers, who forced him to accept that unwelcome gift. Did your father consult your will, when he embraced your Mother? Did he ask you if you had a mind to see this age, or to wait for another? If you would be contented to be the son of a sot, or if you had the ambition to derive yourself from a gallant man? But alas! you who were most concerned in the business, were he who was least consulted. May be then, if you had been locked up in any place but in the Matrix of the ideas of Nature, and that your birth had been in your option, you had said to the Parca, My dear pretty Lady, take the spindle of another in hand, it is a great while since I am in the number of nothings; and I had rather remain so a hundred years longer, then to be to day, to repent to morrow. And yet this you must pass through; your begging to return to the long black house from whence you were haled, signified nothing; for they seemed to understand you cried for the teat.  
These are the reasons, my son, why fathers bear a respect to their children: I know that I have inclined to the children's side more than Justice required, and that in their favour I have a little spoken against my Conscience; but being willing to correct that pride with which some Parents brave their children's weakness, I have done as they who will straighten a crooked tree, draw it on the other side, that between two contortions, it may affect straightness: so I have made fathers render to their children what they took from them, by taking away something that belonged to them, that they might another time be contented with what's their own. I know that by this Apology I have choked all the old fathers: but let them remember they were children before they were fathers; and that it is impossible but that I have spoke extremely to their advantage, since they were not found under a Cabbage: But in fine, whatsoever happens, and though my Enemies should range themselves in battalia against my friends, it can be but well for me, for I have obliged all men, and have disobliged but the half.  
At these words he held his tongue, and our landlord's son began in this manner: Permit me, said he, since by your care I am instructed in the Original History, customs, and Philosophy of the World of this little man, to add something to what you said, and that I may prove that children are not obliged to their fathers for their Generation, because that they were obliged in Conscience to get them.  
The most strict Philosophy of their World confesses, that it is more advantageous to die, since to die you must have lived, then to have had no being: than not to give a being to that Nothing, were worse than giving death. I am more faulty in not peoducing it, then in killing it if it were produced. Yet, my little man, thou wouldst believe it an unpardonable parricide to strangle thy son; really, it would be enormous: but it is much more execrable not to give a being to what can receive it. For that child thou deprivest of light for ever, would have had the satisfaction of enjoying it some while: Nay, and we know that it is deprived but for some ages; but those poor forty Nothings of which thou mayest have made forty good soldiers for thy King, thou maliciously deprivest of life, and sufferest them to corrupt in thy reins, with the hazard of an Apoplexy, which will be thy death.  
But this did not at all satisfy me; which I witnessed with three or four shakes of my head: But our Teacher held his tongue, for our supper was ready to fly away.  
We did then stretch ourselves upon soft quilts, covered with great carpets, and a young servingman having taken the oldest of our Philosophers, did conduct him into a little parlour apart, from whence my Spirit begged him to come as soon as he had ended his meal.  
This fancy of eating apart, inspired me with the curiosity of demanding the cause he will neither accept the smell of meat nor herbs, if they do not die of themselves, believing them sensible of pain: I do not so much wonder, said I, that he abstains from flesh, and all things that have a sensitive life; for in our World the Pythagoreans, nay, and some holy Anchorites use this rule: but for example, not to dare to cut a Cabbage for fear of hurting it, seems very ridiculous to me. But I (answered my Spirit) find a great deal of Reason in this opinion.  
For that Cabbage which you spoke of, had it not as well as you, an existent being in Nature? And is she not mother to you both? Nay, and it seems she hath more necessarily provided for the vegetable, than the rational; since she hath remitted the Generation of a man to the capriciousness of his father, and can according to his pleasure get him or not get him; a rigor with which she hath not treated the Cabbage; for instead of remitting it to the will of the father to generate the son, as if she had more feared the loss of the Cabbages species, then that of man, she constrains them, whether they will or no, to give a being to one another; and not like men, who do fantastically generate when the freak takes them, and who in their life-time surpass not the number of above twenty; whereas each Cabbage can produce forty thousand. And yet we tickle ourselves with the imagination, that nature is more affected to mankind then to this Cabbage: being incapable of passion, she can neither love nor hate any thing; but if she were susceptible of love, she would rather affect this Cabbage, which you know cannot offend her, than man, who would destroy her if he could: to which you may add, that man cannot be born guiltless, being a member of the first Criminal; but we know that the first Cabbage did not offend his Maker. Now if you will say that we were formed ad Imaginem Dei, which the Cabbage is not; which grant it be true, we have blotted out that likeness in our Souls, wherein we resemble him; since there is nothing so contrary to God as sin. Now if our Soul be no longer his Image, we are not more like him in our hands, feet, mouth, forehead, and ears, than the Cabbage is in its leaves, flowers, stalk, pith, or head. Do not you really believe, that if that poor Plant could speak, it would say, Man (my dear Brother) what have I done to thee to merit death? I only grow in gardens, nor am I ever found in desert places, where I may live in security; I disdain all other societies but thine, and I am scarce in thy garden, when to show thee my complacency, I blow, I stretch out my arms to thee, and I offer thee my children in grace; and for the requital of my courtesy, thou makest my head to be cut off: These are the discourses a Cabbage would hold, if it could express its meaning. What, and because he cannot complain, may we justly do him all the wrong he cannot resist? If I find a miserable man bound, may I kill him, because he cannot defend himself? Quite contrary; his weakness would aggravate my cruelty: and though this poor Creature be disrobed of all our advantages, yet it deserves not death; and of all the gifts of being, it hath but that of increase, which we cruelly deprive it of; the sin of massacring a man, is not so great, because one day he must revive, as that of cutting a Cabbage, who can never hope another life: You annihilate the Cabbage in cutting of it; and in killing a man, you do but change his mansion: Nay, I'll say more, since God doth equally cherish all his works, and that he hath equally divided his favours between us and Plants, we ought to have an equal esteem for them as ourselves. It is true, we were first born; but in God's family there is no birthright; and if the Cabbage share not with us in the blessing of immortality, it hath certainly something else to recompense the shortness of it being: may be, it is an Universal Intellect, or a perfect knowledge of all things in their Causes. For which cause, the Wise Director of all things hath not given them Organs like ours, who have but a simple reasoning, weak, and often deceitful; But others, more ingeniously framed, stronger, and more numerous, which serve for the operation of their speculative entertainments. May be, you will ask me, when they ever communicated to us any of those high thoughts: But then tell me, who ever taught us certain Essences, which we admit above us, with which we have no relation or proportion, and whose existence we as hardly comprehend, as the Intelligence; and the manner that a Cabbage is able to express himself in, to his like, and not to us, is, because our senses are too weak to penetrate so far.  
Moses the greatest of all the Philosophers, and who drained the knowledge of Nature, in nature's very source, signified this truth, when he spoke of the tree of Knowledge, under which AEnigma he would teach us, that Plants did possess the perfectest Philosophy. Remember then, O thou the Proudest of all Creatures, that though a Cabbage says nothing, when thou cutte'st it, yet he pays it with thinking. But the poor Vegetable wants Organs to howl as you would do, or fret, or cry; yet it hath those by which he complains of the wrong you do him, and thereby draws the vengeance of Heaven upon you. If you insist asking me, How I know that Cabbages have these fine thoughts? I'll ask you, How you know, that they have them not; and that in imitation of you, one of them doth not say, in closing himself to his neighbour, I am, Mr. Wrinkled Cabbage, Your most humble servant?  
As he was in this part of his discourse, the young boy that had led out our Philosopher, led him in again: Why, how now, supped already? cried my Spirit to him: yes, answered he; and somewhat the sooner, because the Physiognomist permitted me to take of yours. Our young Landlord stayed not till I asked him the explication of this Mystery. I see very well that this manner of living amazeth you; Know then, though that in your World they are more neglectful of their health, yet is not this rule to be despised.  
In every house there is a Physiognomist entertained by the public, which is somewhat like that you call Doctors, but that he governs only the healthful, and that he judgeth by what means he ought to treat us, either by proportion, figure, Symmetry of our members, by the lines of the face, tincture of the flesh, the softness of our skin, the agility of the body, the sound of the voice, the colour, force, and lastingness of our hair: Did not you lately take notice of a man of little stature? it was the Physiognomist of the house, who gazed upon you so; assure yourself, that he diversified the exhalations of your dinner, according to what he found in your Complexion. Do but consider how different your Couch is from the rest of ours; without doubt, he judgeth your temper of much another nature, since he so much feared the fume of these little Birds should communicate itself to your nostrils, or that your fumes should trouble us; and you shall see that at night he will choose your flowers with as great circumspection. All this while I made signs to my young landlord, to oblige the Philosophers to fall upon some Chapter of the Science they professed; who most friendly, straight offered the occasion: wherefore I will not trouble you with the Discourse or Prayers, which were the Prologues of this Treatise; and indeed, the medley of seriousness and raillery, were too excellent to be imitated. But in fine, friendly Reader, the last of the Doctors that came in, continued in this sort.  
I must now prove, that there are infinite worlds, in an infinite world: Represent then to yourself the Universe like a great Animal, and that the Stars which are Worlds, are in that great Animal; as they being great Animals, serve reciprocally to other Animals, as we our Horses, &c. And that we in our turns are worlds to certain creatures, which are without comparison less than us; as certain vermin, lice and little worms, which may be the ground for more imperceptible ones; and so that we each in particular appear a great World to this little People. May be, our flesh, our blood and spirits, are nothing but a conjuncture made of little Creatures, who there entertain themselves, lend us motion by their own, and blindly suffer themselves to be ruled by our will, which is their Coachman, conduct us ourselves, and altogether produce that we call life: for, pray tell me, is it hard to believe, that a louse takes your body for a World, and that when one of them hath traveled from one of your ears to the other, for his companions to say, that he hath traveled to the two ends of the World, or that he hath made a course from one Pole to the other? Yes, without doubt, this little people take your hair for the forest of that country; Pores filled with sweat or liquour, for fountains; Bubes or pimples, for lakes or ponds; and Aposthumes, for Seas; and defluxions, for Deluges: when you comb yourself forwards and backwards, they take it for flowing and ebbing of the Ocean. Doth not the itching prove what I say? The worm that causeth it, is it any thing else but one of those little Creatures, that hath deprived itself from all society, to establish itself a giant in its own country? If you ask me, Why they are bigger than other imperceptibles? I must ask you, Why Elephants are bigger than we? or Irishman then Spaniards? As for the Blisters or Dander, which you are ignorant of, they must either arrive by the corruption of their Enemies, which these little giants have massacred, or that the plague hath produced them, by the want of food for which the sedious have quarrelled, and have left nothing in the field but mountains of dead corpse; or that this Tyrant, having chased all about him away, who with their bodies damned up his poor, hath given our liquid passage, which being strayed out of the Sphere of our circulative blood, remains corrupted. May be, I may be asked, Why one louse or worm produceth so many more? which is not hard to conceive; for as one revolt procures another, so these little people by the ill example of their seditious companions, do each aspire to Empire, and kindle everywhere war, massacre and hunger. But you will say, that some people are not so subject to itching as others, and yet we equally possess these little things, since we say, that it is these that compose our life. It is true, for we may perceive, that phlegmatic people are less subject to scratching, than the choleric, because that the people sympathising with the Climate they inhabit, are less active in cold bodies, than others warmed by the temper of their Region, who frisk and stir, and cannot quietly remain in one place; whence it proceeds, that the choleric man is more delicate than the phlegmatic, being animated in more places; and the Soul being the action of those Creatures, he is capable of feeling in all those places where this little Creature stirs; whereas the phlegmatic wanting heat, cannot by reason of his coldness, in many places at once, give action to those little Creatures; and thereby is less Universally sensible. And to prove more plainly this Universal worminess, do but consider when you are hurt, how the blood straight flows to the wounded part; your Doctors say, it is sent by provident Nature to succour the debilitated parts; which should make us conclude, that there is besides the Soul and the understanding, a third intellectual substance in us, who enjoys its functions and Organs apart. Wherefore I think it more probable to say; that those little Animals finding themselves assaulted, presently send to demand succour of their neighbours; & being arrived from all parts, and the country being incapable of so much company, they either die with hunger, or are smothered in the press: this mortality happens, when the apostume is ripe: for to testify that these Creatures are then dead, the rotten flesh becomes insensible; and if bleeding often ordained for to divert the fluxion, doth do any good, 'tis because having lost much by the orifice which these little Creatures endeavoured to stop, they refuse to assist their Allies, having but enough wherewithal to defend themselves at home.  
Thus he ended; and when the other Philosopher saw our eyes fixed upon his, to exhort him to speak in his time:  
Men, said he, seeing you are curious to teach this little Animal (our like) something of the Science we profess, I will now dictate a Treatise, which I shall be willing to produce unto him, because of the light it gives to the Intelligence of our physic; it is the explication of the Eternal Origine of the World. But being much pressed in the working of my bellows, you will pardon the time, since I'll promise you as soon as ever it is arrived where it ought to be, I will largely satisfy you.  
At these words, the son of the house called his father to know what a clock it was; who having answered, that it was past eight, he asked him in passion, why he had not advertised them at seven, as he had commanded him; and that he knew that the house removed to morrow, and that the walls of the Town were so already: son, answered he, since you were at table, there is an express prohibition published of parting till the next day after to morrow: no matter, answered the young man, you ought blindly to obey, and not to penetrate into my orders, and only to remember what I had commanded you: quick, go and fetch your picture; which when he had brought, the young man took it by the arm, and whipped it a whole quarter of an hour together. Thou good for nothing (he continued) for punishment of your disobedience, I will make you, serve every one this day for a laughingstock; for which effect, you shall go upon two legs: the poor man went forth quite disconsolate, and his son excused his transport unto us.  
I had much ado, though I almost bit my lips thorough, to forbear laughing at so pleasant a punishment; wherefore to break off this mad Pedantism, which would surely have made me burst out at last, I beseeched him to tell me, what he meant by the voyage of the Town, of which he had lately spoke; and if the houses and walls traveled? He answered me, Amongst our Towns, dear Stranger, there be Motional and Fundamental; the Motional ones of that we are now in, are made as I shall now tell you: the Architecture as you see of each Palace upholds it upon light wood; we make it upon four wheels: in the thickness of one of the walls, he puts ten great pair of bellows, whose snouts pass by an Horizontal line thorough the last story from one pinnacle to the other; so that when they would remove the Town to another place (for they change the Air each season) each one unfolds on one side of his house large sails, just before the pipes of the bellows; then having bent a spring to make them play, their houses, in less than eight days, by the continual gusts which those windy Monsters vomit, are driven a hundred leagues: as for those we call stable, they are almost like your Towers, except that they are of wood, and that they are pierced in the Centre, by a great and strong Vice, which goes from the top to the bottom, to mount or dismount them at pleasure.  
Now the earth is hollowed as deep as the house is high; and it is all ordered in this manner, because that as soon as the frosts begin to harden the Earth, they may sink their houses, where they are sheltered from the malice of the Air; but as soon as the sweet breathing of the Spring begins to soften it again, they mount into the light by the means of this great Vice I spoke of. I entreated him, since he had already had so much goodness for me, and that the Town was removed not till after the morrow, to tell me something of that Eternal Original of the Worlds of which he had a little before spoke; & I promise you, said I, in recompense thereof, as soon as I shall be returned into the Moon, from whence my governor (pointing to my Spirit) will tell you I am come, I will sow your glory, in recounting the rare things you have told me: I see that you laugh at that promise, because you do not believe the Moon I speak of to be a World, and me an inhabitant thereof; but I can assure you, that the people of that World, who take this for a Moon, will laugh at me when I shall tell them, that it is a World, and that there are fields and Inhabitants. He answered me with a smile, and thus pursued his Discourse.  
Since we are constrained, when we have recourse to the Original of that Great All, to fall into three or four absurdities; it will be necessary to take the way where we shall be least apt to stumble: I then say, that the first obstacle that stops us is, the Eternity of the Worlds; and the Wit of man not being strong enough to conceive it, and being no abler to imagine it, than that great Universe, so fine, so well ordered, being made by its self, they have recourse to Creation. But it is like him that leaps into the River, for fear of being were by the Rain; they save themselves from the arms of a Dwarf, to fall into the mercy of a giant; nay, they do not save themselves neither; for that Eternity which they take from the World, because they cannot comprehend it, they bestow upon God, as if he had need of that present, or as if it were easier to imagine it in the one than the other: for, pray tell me, who did ever imagine any thing could be made of nothing? Alas, between nothing and an atom, there are preparations so infinite, that the quickest Brain cannot penetrate into it; therefore to scape this inexplicable Labyrinth, you must admit an Eternal matter with Gods. But you will answer me, when I have admitted this Eternal matter, How did this Choas range itself in this manner? Well, I will now explicate it unto you.  
My little Animal, you must after having Mentally divided each little visible Body into an infinite many invisible Bodies, imagine that the infinite Universe is composed of nothing but these infinite Atoms, most solid, most incorruptible, and most pure; of which some are cubics, others Parallelegrams; others Angular; others round; others sharp or pointed; others Pyramidical; others Exagons, and others Ovals; all which act diversely according to their figure: To prove which, put an Ivory Bowl very round upon a very even place, at the least impression you shall bestow upon it, it will be a quarter of an hour without lying still; to which I add, that if it were as perfectly round, as some of those Atoms are, and the surface upon which it is put perfectly even, it would never rest. If art then can incline a Body to perpetual Motion; Why shall not we believe. Nature can do it? it is so of the other Figures; some whereof, as the square, require a lasting repose; others, a motion on one side; others, half motions, as trepidations; and the round, whose being is motion, meeting in conjunction with the Pyramidical, may be makes what we call Fire, because Fire doth not only act without repose, but also pierces and penetrates easily: the Fire moreover hath different effects, according to the overture and qualities of the Angles, when the round Figure is joined; as for example, the Fire of Pepper, is another thing than the Fire of Sugar; and that of Sugar, then that of Cinnamon; that of Cinnamon, then that of a Clove; and this last, then that of a Faggot. Now the fire which is the constructor of the parts, and the whole of the Universe, hath pushed and gatheed into an Oak, the quantity of Figures necessary to compose an Oak.  
In fine, these first and indivisible Atoms, compose a Circle, upon which without difficulty move the most cumbersome difficulties of physic; nay, the very operation of the senses, which nobody yet could conceive, I will easily explicate by these little Bodies; let us begin with our fight, which as the most incomprehensible, deserves our first debate; I conceive it is occasioned when the tunique of the eyes, whose pores are like glass, transmit that fiery dust, which is called visual Rays, and that it is stopped by some opaque matter, which casts them back again; then meeting in their way the image of what repercussed them, and that image being nothing but an infinite number of little bodies, which are continually exhaled in an equal superficies with the subject beheld, they throng it with them back to our eye. I know you will object, that a Glass is an Opaque Body, very much closed; and yet instead of driving back those other little Bodies, it suffers itself to be pierced: But my answer is, that the pores of the glass is of the same Figure, as the Atoms of Fire, which pierce it; & as a wheaten sieve is not proper to sift oats, nor an oaten one to sift wheat; so a box of fit, though very thin, that lets sound penetrate it, yet admits not the sight to do the same; and a piece of crystal that is transparent to the sight, will admit no penetration with your finger. I could not hold interrupting of him; a great Poet and Philosopher of our World, said I, hath spoke after Epicurus, and he after Democritus, almost like you of these little Bodies; wherefore you do not much amaze me with this discourse; & I beseech you, in untwining of it, tell me, how you will by these principles explicate the manner of representing yourself in a glass: that is very easy, replied he; for imagine to yourself that those fires of your eyes having past through the Glass, and finding behind it a Body not transparent, which rejects them, they return the same way they came; and finding those little Bodies travelling in an equal superficies upon the Glass, they recall them to our eyes; and our imagination, warmer than any other of the faculties of our Soul, attracts the most subtle of them, wherewith the shapes at home a picture in little.  
The operation of hearing is not harder to be conceived: and to be more succinct, let us consider it only in the Harmony of a Lute touched by a Master of that are: You will ask me, How it is possible I should conceive a thing so far off me, that I cannot see? Is it that a spongeous matter goes out of my ears, to enclose that music, and so bring it back? or doth that Player or musician engender another of the like species, and another Lute in little, which like an echo, hath order to recant the same airs unto me? No: But this Miracle proceeds, that the string being drawn, strikes those little Bodies of the which air is composed, into my Brain, and these little corporal Nothings, do sweetly pierce it; so that according as the string is stretched, the sound is high, because it strikes the Atoms the more vigorously; and the Organ thus penetrated, furnisheth our fancy with wherewithal to frame a picture: if too little, it happens that our memory, not yet having finished its Image, we are constrained to repeat to it the same sound, to the end that of the Materials which furnished it, as for example, the measures of a Saraband, it may take enough to finish the Image of that Saraband. But this operation is nothing so marvellous as the others, by which by the help of the same Organ, we are sometimes stirred up to joy, or Choler, &c.  
Which is done, when in that motion those little Bodies meet with others in us, stirred up in the same manner, or which are susceptible by their own Figure of the like emotions; for then the Newcomers excite their Landlords to move as they do: and thus when a violent Air meets with the Fire of our Blood, it inclines it to a violent motion, and animates it to an outward course, which we call ardour of courage, or of the mind. If the sound be sweeter, and that it can raise but a less flame, more shaken by conducting it through our Nerves, Members, and Pores of our flesh, which causeth that tickling we style joy: thus it happens in the ebullution of the other Passions, which will according as those little Bodies are flung more or less violently upon us, according to the motion they receive by the rencountre of other motions, and according as they find movable matter about us: thus much for hearing.  
The demonstration of the Touch, I think is not more difficult; when we conceive that from all palpable matters there is a perpetual emission of those little Bodies; and according as we touch it, there is more evaporated, because we press them from the subject, as water from a sponge: the hard make the Organ sensible of their solidity; the supple, of their softness, the rugged, &c. To prove which, we cannot but cunningly feel with hands used, or hardened in labour, because of the thickness of the skin, which being no longer porous, nor animated, hardly transmits these Atoms from the matter. May be some would fain know where the Organ of Touching resides: for my part, I believe that it is spread through all the superficies of the body, since we feel in each part: yet imagine that we distinguish quicker, by how much we feel nearer the head, which we may experience when with closed eyes we handle any thing; for we more easily guess at it, then if we had felt it with our hinder-feet; which happens that our skin being all over sieve-like, in little holes, our Nerves which are a matter no closer, lose in the way a great many of those little Atoms, by the little holes of their contexture, before their arrival to the Brain, the period of their Voyage. Now I must speak of Smelling, and the Taste.  
Pray tell me, when I taste a fruit, is it not because the heat of my mouth melts it? Confess then, that being there is salt in a Pear, and that the dissolution having divided it into little Bodies of another Figure then that which composeth the taste or savour of an Apple, they must pierce our palate in a different manner; in the same sort as the wound made by a Pike, is not like that which a Bullet suddenly makes me suffer; and as that Pistol-bullet makes me suffer another pain then a slug of steel. Of the Smelling I have nothing to say, since your Philosophers themselves confess, that it is framed by a continual emission of little Bodies. But I will proceed upon this principle, to explicate the Creation, Harmony, and Influence of the celestial Globes, with the immovable variety of Meteors.  
He was going to continue, when our old Landlord entered, who advertised us, that it was time to go to rest; he brought crystals full of glowworms, to light the Parlour; but as these little insect fires lose their light, when they are not newly gathered, these being ten days old, did hardly do us any service. My Spirit waited not till the company was accommodated, but went up to his study, and straight descended with two bowls of fire, so glistering, that we all wondered he did not burn his fingers.  
These incombustible torches (said he) will better light us, than these bundles of worms; they are Rays of the Sun which I have purged of their heat, otherwise the corasive qualities of the fire, would have offended your sight, in dazzling your eyes; I have fixed their light, & have enclosed it in these transparent Bowls which I hold: this ought not much to astonish you, for it is no harder for me which am born in the Sun, to condense his Beams, which are the dust of that World, then for you to gather together the Atoms of the pulverised earth of this World: whereupon our Landlord sent a servant to conduct our Philosopher, because it was night, with a dozen Globes of glowworms hung at their four feet; for us, that is, my Preceptor and myself, we lay by the order of the Physiognomist; he put me that night in a Chamber of Violets, and Lilies, and I was tickled according to the custom; and in the morning I saw my Spirit come in, who said, he came from the Palace where one of the Queen's Maids of Honour had sent for him, to inquire after me, protesting, that she still continued in the same design of keeping her word, that is, she should willingly follow me where I pleased to carry her into the other World; which much edified me, when I found that the chiefest motion was to become a Christian; so that I have promised her to aid her in all her designs with all my power, and for that effect to invent a Machine, able to hold 2 or 3 persons, into which this day you may mount. I will seriously apply myself to this enterprise; wherefore to divert you in the mean time, here is a Book, which I leave you; I brought it from my native Country, and it is entitled, The State and Empire of the Sun, with an addition, Of the History of the Spark; I also give you this, which I esteem much more; it is the great work of the Philosophers, which one of the greatest Wits in the Sun composed: He proves herein, that all things are true, and declares the manner of uniting Physically all contradictories; as for example, that white is black, and black is white; that one may be, and not be at the same time; that there may be a mountain without a valley, and that nothing is something; and that all things that are, are not. But note, that he proves also, unheard-of Paradoxes, without any Captions, or Sophistical Reason. When you are weary of reading, you may walk, or entertain yourself with the son of the house; his wit is very charming, and all that I dislike in him is, that he is a little impious; if he chance to scandalize you, or by some Argument to shake your faith, do not fail presently to come and propose it to me, and I will resolve your difficulties; whereas another would bid you break company. But as he is extremely vain, I am sure he will take that flight for a defeat; and he would believe your faith unreasonable, if you should refuse to hear his. He left me (saying so,) but he was scarce gone out, when I began to consider my Books and their boxes, that is, their coverings, which seemed to me admirable, because of their richness; the one was cut of a single Diamond, without comparison more lustrous than ours; and the second seemed a monstrous Pearl cleft in two: my Spirit had translated these books into the Language of that World; but because I have known of their Print, I will explicate to you the fashion of these two Volumes.  
At the opening of the Box, I found in one of them something of Metal, almost like our Watches, full of little springs, and almost imperceptible Machines: 'tis true, it is a Book, but a Miraculous one, which hath neither leaves nor letters. In fine, it is a Book, wherein to learn any thing, the eyes are altogether unnecessary, and the ears are only to be used. When any one than hath a mind to read in it, he winds up with a great many little Springs this Machine, than he turns the needle upon the Chapter he intends to peruse; and straight, as from the mouth of a man, or some Musical instrument, there issueth forth distinct and different sounds, which the men of quality make use of in the Moon for the expression of their thoughts. When I have since reflected upon this miraculous invention, I no longer wondered, that the young men of that country were more knowing at sixteen or eighteen years old, than the grey beards of our Climate; for knowing how to read as soon as speak, they are never without Lectures in their Chambers, their walks, the town, or travelling; they may have in their pockets or at their girdles, thirty of these Books, where they need but wind up a spring to hear a whole Chapter, and so more if they have a mind to hear the Book quite through; so that you continually possess the company of all the great men, living and dead, who entertain you with living voices. This present occupied me about an hour; and in fine, having hung them like a pair of pendants, I went a walking; but I was hardly at the end of the street, when I met a multitude of people very melancholy.  
Neither is this our finest way of burial; for when one of our Philosopher arrives to an age wherein he finds his Wit decay, and the Ice of his years to chill the motions of his Soul, he assembles his friends at a sumptuous Banquet; then having expounded the motives which make him resolve to take leave of Nature, and the small hopes the hath of adding any thing to his great Works; they either are gracious to him, that is to say, they permit him to die, or they severely command him to live. But when by plurality of voices, they have left his life at his own disposing, he advertiseth his dearest friends of the time and place. These purge and abstain from eating four and twenty hours, then being come to the house of the wiseman, and having sacrificed to the Sun, they enter the Chamber of the Generoso, who waits their coming, upon a bed of State; each one embraceth him; and when it comes to his turn whom he most affects, after having tenderly embraced, leaning upon him, he joins his mouth to his, and with his right hand sheaths the prepared dagger in his breast: his friend parts not his lips from his, till he find him expired; then drawing the steel from his bosom, and closing with his mouth the wound, he swallows his blood till a second succeed him; then a third, than a fourth, and so all the company; and four or five hours after, they bring each of them a wench of sixteen or seventeen years old; and during three or four days, whilst they are tasting the pleasured of love, they feed upon nothing but the flesh of the deceased, which they eat raw, to the end, that if of an hundred embracements any thing be born, they may be assured that their friend is revived.  
I interrupted this Discourse, saying to him that made it, that this manner of doing had some resemblance with the fashion of our Climate: so I continued my walk so long, that when I came back, dinner had been ready two hours: they asked me, why I came so late? It is not my fault, said I to the Cook that complained, for I inquired many times in the streets what a Clock it was, but they made me no answer, only opened their mouths, shut their teeth, and held their faces awry.  
Why, cried out all the company, Do you not know that by that they showed you what a Clock it was? In-faith, said I, they might have held their long Noses in the Sun long enough, before I understood them. It is a commodity, answered they, which serves them in stead of a Watch; for of their Teeth they make so true a Dial, that when they will instruct any one in the hour of the day, they open their Lips, and the shadow of their Noses, like a Gnomon, denotes the questioned minute. Now that you may know why in this country they have all great Noses, as soon as the woman is brought to bed, the matrons carry immediately the child to the Master of the Seminary; and just at the end of the year, those of experience being assembled, if their noses prove shorter than a certain measure in the syndic, he is judged Camas, and put into the hands of some who geld them. You will ask me the cause of this barbarousness, and how it comes to pass, that we who esteem Virginity a crime, should ordain forced continence? But know, that we did it, after having observed for thirty ages, that a great Nose denotes a wise man, courteous, affable, generous, liberal, and that a little one is a sign of the contrary; wherefore of flat noses we make Eunuchs, because the republic had rather have no children, than children like them: he was yet a speaking, when I saw a man enter stark naked; I presently sat down and covered myself to salute him; for those are the marks of the greatest respects you can testify in that country: This Kingdom, says he, desires before you return into your world, to advertise the Magistrates, because that a Mathematician comes now from promising the council, that if when you are returned home, you will make a certain Machine that he'll teach you, he will attract your Globe, and join it to this; which I promised to perform. I beseech you (said I to my Landlord when the other was gone) to tell me, why this Messenger wore about him the Privy-Parts in brass, which I had often seen when I was caged, but never asked what they were for, because I was always environed by the Queen's women, whom I feared to offend, if I had in their presence begun so gross a discourse: so that he answered me in this manner; The females here, no more than the males are ingrateful enough to blush at the sight of that which forged them; and Virgins are not ashamed to love the only thing upon us, which is the greatest memorial of nature, pricked thereunto by an itching zeal: know then, that the Scarf wherewith this man is honoured, on which hangeth the delightfullest Member of mankind, is the symbol of a Gentleman, and the mark to distinguish the Noble from the ignoble: this Paradox seemed so extragavant, that I could not forbear to laugh. This custom seems very extraordinary to me; for in our World the mark of Gentility is to wear a Sword. Why, my dear little man, said my Host, are the great ones of your country mad, to make a Parade of an instrument which denotes a Butcher, and which is forged but for our ruin, and in fine, the sworn Enemy of all living Creatures; and on the other side, to hide an instrument without which we should be in the rank of what is not the Prometheus of each Animal, and the constant repairer of nature's feebleness? Unhappy Country! where the marks of Generation are ignominious, and those of destruction honourable; and in the mean mean time you call these members the shameful parts, as if there were any thing more glorious, than the bestowing of life, or more infamous than the depriving thereof. During all this Discourse, we still continued our dinner; which having finished, we went into the garden to take the Air; and there taking an occasion to speak of Generation and Conception, he said to me,  
You must know, that the Earth being converted to a tree, that tree to a hog, and that hog to a man; we must believe all beings in Nature tend to the most perfect, and that they aspire to become man, that Essence being the Period, as the best mixture, and the best imaginable in this World; since it is that which joins life with Reason, all which none but a pedantic Coxcomb will deny, being we see that a Plum-tree, by the heat of its germ, as by a mouth, sucks and digests the sod that environs it; that a hog devours the fruit thereof, and converts it to a part of himself, and a man eating this hog, warms again this dead flesh, joins it to his own, and thereby revives the Animal under another species: so that this man you see, may be was threescore years ago, a turf in my Garden; which is the more probable, because that the Metempsicous opinion of Pythagoras, sustained by so many great men, is likely to have come to our ears, only to oblige us to search out the truth: as in effect we have found, that all things that are, feel, or vegetate; and that in fine, when all matter is arrived to that Period which is its perfection, it descends and returns to its inanity, to reach the same parts again. I descended very well satisfied into the garden, and I began to tell my Companion what our young Master had taught me, when the Physiognomist arrived to lead us to supper, and afterwards to rest.  
In the morning as soon as I waked, I went to call up my Antagonist: It is (said I, in accosting him) as great a miracle to find a great Wit like yours buried in sleep, as to see fire without action. He smiled at this ill compliment: But cried he, (with a choleric kind of love) Will you never leave these fabulous terms? Know, that these names defame the name of a Philosopher; and as the Wise man sees nothing in the World but what he conceives, and judgeth may be conceived, he ought to abhor all those expressions of prodigies and events of Nature, which stupid puppies have invented to excuse the weakness of their understanding.  
I thought then I was bound in Conscience to take up the disconrse, that I might rectify his opinion. Though you be, replied I, very obstinate in your tenants, yet I have plainly seen things supernatural come to pass. You say so, continued he, but you know not that the force of the imagination is able to cure all Diseases you entitle by the name of supernatural; by reason of a certain natural Balm, containing all the contrary qualities to each Disease that molests us, which arrives when our imagination advertized by pain, presently seeks out the particular remedy for the ill. For which reason a learned Physician of your World counsels the Patient rather to take an ignorant Doctor that he doth believe otherwise, than a learned one, whom he shall believe ignorant; because he thought that our imagination labouring our Cure, if it have Medicines to help it, may effect its design; But that the best Remedies were in vain without the help of imagination: Do you wonder, that the first men of your World lived so long without skill in physic? No: And what do you think was the reason, that their Nature was yet in its force, and that Universal Balm not yet dissipated, by the Drugs wherewith your Physicians now consume you? needing as than nothing to regain your health, but strong wishes to that effect, and imaginations that you were cured. And so their vigorous fancies plunging their selves into that Vital oil, did attract the Elixir; and applying the Active to the Passive, they found themselves as well as before, almost in the twinkling of an eye; which in despite of nature's depravation, is seen now a days, though I must confess but seldom: But the vulgar call it a Miracle, whereof for my part, I believe nothing; and I ground myself upon something more, then that wherewithal these Doctors are cozened, that it is so hard to be done: For I will ask them, he that is recovered of a desperate Fever, did heartily wish, it is likely, in the time of his sickness, to be cured, and may be made vows to that effect, so that necessarily he must have died, remained sick, or be cured; if he had died, they would have said that the Heavens had put a period to his pains; nay, and according to the Deceased his prayers, they would have said, he had been cured of all Diseases: if he had remained infirm, they would have said, he wanted faith: But because he is cured, they straight cry, that it is a visible Miracle. Is it not likelier, that fancy, being excited by the violent desires of health, hath done its operation? for, yield that he scaped, why must it be a miracle? since we see many people who had made as large vows, die miserably with all their promises.  
But at least, said I, if what you say of this Balm be true, it is a sign of the discussive faculty of the Soul, since without using the instruments of our Reason, without relying on the conjunction of our Will, she acts of herself, by applying the Active to the Passive, as if she was separated from us: then if being separated from us, she is reasonable, she must necessarily be spiritual; and if you confess her spiritual, I conclude her immortal, since death happens to the Animal, but by the change of forms, of which only matter is capable. The young man then gracefully placing himself upon his bed, and making me sit down, discoursed after this manner: For the Souls of Beasts which are corporeal, I do not wonder they die, since they are composed harmonically of four qualities, a force or vigour of blood, and a Proportion of Organs well converted; but I much wonder that ours, being intellectual, incorporeal, and immortal, should be forced to dislodge by the same cause, that makes that of a Beast perish: Hath he contracted with our bodies, that when they received a thrust through the heart, or a Bullet-shot into their Brains, or through their bulk, she should then quit her mansion house?  
And if this Soul be spiritual and subsistent of its self, so reasonable that she is as capable of intelligence being separated from us, as joined to our mass; Why cannot blind men, born with all those lively advantages of an intellectual Soul, imagine what seeing is? As if, because they are not deprived thereof, by the death of all their Senses; why then I cannot make use of my right hand, because I have a left.—. And in fine, to make a just comparison, and what will destroy all you can say; I will content myself to lay before you the example of a Painter, who cannot work without his Pencil; the Soul is the same deprived of Corporeal senses,—. Yes, but answered he,—.  
But yet they will have it, that the Soul which can but imperfectly act, having lost one of her tools in the course of life, can hereafter act with perfection, when after our decease she hath lost them all: yet you will tell me, that she hath no need of those instruments to perform her functions. I'll answer you, that the Hospital of blind men ought to be extirpated for counterfeits. He would have continued in these impertinent Arguments, when I closed his mouth by praying him to leave them off, as he did, for fear of quarrelling, for he perceived I began to grow warm; after which he went away, and left me admiring the people of that World, in whom amongst the meanest sort so much natural wit is found, whereas those of ours have so little, and which costs them so dear. But at last the love of my country loosened me from the desire and thoughts I had of staying there; I thought upon nothing now but my departure: but I saw so much impossibility in it, that I became very melancholy. Which my Spirit presently perceived; and having asked me the reason, why I was not as I used to be, I freely disclosed the cause of my ill humour; but he made me such fair promises of my return, that I wholly relied upon him: I sent word thereof to the Council, who straight sent for me, and made me swear, that I would rehearse here the things I had seen there: after which, my passports were drawn; and my Spirit having furnished himself with necessaries for so long a voyage, asked me in what part of my country I would land: I answered him, that most of the young Gentlemen of Paris, do once in their life propose to themselves a voyage to Rome, imagining that after that, there is nothing worth doing or seeing; and I begged of him that I might imitate them: but added I, in what Machine shall we perform this journey? and what directions do you think that Mathematician will give me, who talked tother day of joining these two worlds together? As for the Mathematician, said he, do not trouble yourself, it is a man who promises much, and doth nothing; and for the Machine which shall carry you back, it shall be the same, which brought you to the Court: how? said I, will the Air become as solid as the sand, to fasten your steps? I can hardly believe that. And it is much, said he, that you believe, and that you do not believe; and pray why should the Witches of your country, who march in the Air, and conduct whole Armies of Hail, Snow, Rain, and other such stuff from one Province to another, have more Power than we? I beseech you, be a little more credulous in favour of me. It is true, said I, that I have received from you so many favours, as well as Socrates and others, for whom you had so much friendship, that I ought to confide in you, as I do in abandoning myself to your will with all my heart. I had no sooner spoke this word, but a kind of Whirlwind rose; and holding me in his arms, he made me pass without any incommodity, that great space, (which our Astronomers speak of, betwixt us and the Moon) in a day and a half: which made me know, that they lied, who said that a millstone would be 360. and so many years a falling from Heaven; since I was so small a time in falling from the Globe of the Moon to this. In fine, at the beginning of the second day, I perceived I was near the Earth, since I already distinguished Europe from Africa, and both from Asia; when I smelled the Brimstone which proceeded from a very high Mountain, which so incommodated me, that I swooned: I know not what happened to me afterwards, but when I came to myself again, I found myself entangled amongst some briars upon the side of a hill, in the midst of some shepherds that spoke Italian: I knew not what was become of my Spirit, and I demanded of those shepherds, if they had not seen him: at which words they made the sign of the Cross, and looked upon me as if I had not been myself; but telling them that I was a Christian, and desiring of them to conduct me to some resting place, they brought me to a Village about a mile off; where I was scarce arrived, when all the dogs of the Place, from the meanest Curs, to the greatest Mastiffs, flew all upon me; and had certainly devoured me, if I had not found a house wherein I sheltered myself: but that did not hinder them to continue their Conventicles, so that the Master of the house began to look upon me with an ill eye; and I believe the scruple those augurious people in such kind of Accidents have, would have made this man have abandoned me to the fury of those cursed Animals, if I had not bethought myself, that the thing that made them so fierce after me, was the World from whence I came: for being accustomed to bark at the Moon, they smelled I came from thence, having the smell about me, as those that come from Sea, smell of that briny Element. To purge me from that evil Air, I exposed myself upon a terrace three or four hours together in the Sun; after which coming down, and the dogs smelling no longer the dangerous influence which had created me their enemy, did no longer bark at me, but sneaked home quietly. The next morning, I traveled for Rome, where I saw the relics of the Triumphs of some great men, past and present; I admired the beautiful ruins, and the rich reparations made by the Moderns. In fine, after having stayed there fifteen days in the Company of Monsieur de Cyreno my cousin, who lent me money for my return; I went to Civita-Vecchia aboard a galley, which brought me to Marseilles. During all this voyage, I thought upon nothing, but of that I had so lately made. I began the memorials of it then, and have since my return, put them as much in order, as sickness (which made me keep my bed) would permit me: but foreseeing that they would be the end of my studies and troubles, to keep my word with the Council of that World, I did beg of Monsieur le Bret, my dearest and most inviolable friend, to put them forth in Print; with the History of the sun's republic, and that of the Spark, if those that have stolen them from us, do render them unto him, as I do most earnestly conjure them to do.  
FINIS.