It is somewhat remarkable, that perhaps the _only_ "Voyages to the Moon," which have been published in the English tongue, should have been the productions of English bishops:--the first forming a tract, re-published in the Harleian Miscellany, and said to have been written by Dr. Francis Goodwin, Bishop of Landaff, (who died in 1633,) and entitled "_The Man in the Moon, or the discourse of a voyage thither_, by Domingo Gonsales,"--and the second written in 1638, by Dr. John Wilkins, Bishop of Chester, under the title of "_The Discovery of a New World, or a Discourse tending to prove, that 'tis probable there may be another habitable world in the Moon, with a discourse concerning the possibility of a passage thither."_ These two works differ in several essential particulars:--in Dr. Goodwin's, we have men of enormous stature and prodigious longevity, with a flying chariot, and some other slight points of resemblance to the Travels of Gulliver:--whilst Bishop Wilkins's is intended honestly and scientifically to prove, "that it is possible for some of our posterity to find out a conveyance to this other world; and, if there be inhabitants there, (which the Bishop, satisfactorily to himself, settles,) to have commerce with them!" From the first of these, Swift has derived many hints in his voyage to Laputa, and improved them into those humorous and instructive allusions, which have caused the reputation of the author of the _"Travels of Gulliver"_ to be extended to every portion of the civilized globe. Since the appearance of this celebrated satire, no one sufficiently comprehensive to lash the follies of the age--the _quicquid agunt homines_--has made its appearance: we have had numerous ephemeral productions, inflicting severe castigations upon particular vices or absurdities; but the visionary conceits of the many, constantly promulgated in the progressive advancement of human knowledge, although legitimate objects of censure, have not, since the time of Swift, been embodied into one publication.