Answer me this question, said the Marchioness:--Are the inhabitants of the moon as much afraid of eclipses as those of the earth? How ridiculous it is if the Indians of that world put themselves up to the chin in water; if the Americans believe the earth is angry with them; if the Greeks imagine we are enchanted, and suppose we shall injure their herbs; and in short, if we are inflicting on them all the terror they have caused us? I have no doubt but that is the case, answered I; for why should the good folks in the moon have more sense than we? What right have they to frighten us, unless we can frighten them? I dare say, added I, laughing; that, as a prodigious number of men have been, and still are, silly enough to worship the moon; so there are some in the moon that pay their adorations to the earth, and that they are kneeling to one another. If it be so, she replied, we may pretend to have an influence on the moon, and to produce the crisis in the diseases of her sick people, but as a little common sense in the dwellers on that globe would be sufficient to destroy all these honours, I must confess I am afraid they will have the advantage over us. Don't alarm yourself, said I; 'tis not probable that we are the only fools in the universe. There is something in ignorance that is calculated for general reception, and though I can only guess the character of the people in question, yet I have no more doubt, that could we form the comparison, we should find ourselves equal to them, than I have that the accounts are true that we receive of their globe. What accounts do you receive enquired she. Those, I replied, that are given us by the learned who travel there every day by the assistance of telescopes. They tell us that they have discovered in the moon earth, seas, lakes, elevated mountains, and profound abysses.