We can only hope that in Jupiter there may be some astronomers who, after taking great pains to compose very excellent telescopes, and availing themselves of the finest nights for making their observations, may at length discover a very little planet which they had never seen before. At first the learned give an account of it in their journal; the rest of the people either hear nothing about it, or laugh at it when they do; the philosophers are discouraged and resolve not to mention it again, and but a few of the inhabitants who are more reasonable than the others will admit the idea. By and by they examine again; they see the little planet a second time; they are then assured of its reality, and even begin to think it has a motion round the sun. After observing it a thousand times, they find out that this revolution is performed in a year: and at last, when the learned have been at great pains to investigate the subject, the inhabitants of Jupiter know that our world is in the universe. The curious eagerly look through their telescopes, and with all their looking, can scarcely discern it. Were it not disagreeable, said she, to know that from Jupiter we can only be seen through telescopes, I should amuse myself with the idea of all the glasses being pointed towards the earth as ours are towards him, and the mutual curiosity with which the two planets examine each other, and enquire, _What world is that? What sort of people inhabit it?_ Your imagination is too rapid, I replied; when the astronomers of Jupiter become acquainted with our earth, they do not become acquainted with us: they will not suspect the possibility of its being inhabited; if any one should venture to express such an idea, how they would laugh at him! Perhaps they would even persecute any philosopher who should maintain the opinion. After all I think the inhabitants of Jupiter are too much occupied in making discoveries on their own globe, to concern themselves about us. Jupiter is of such extent, that if they are adepts in navigation their Christopher Columbus must be fully employed. The inhabitants cannot know, even by reputation, a hundredth part of the other inhabitants. In Mercury, on the contrary, they are all neighbours, living familiarly together, and hardly considering the tour of their world more than a pleasant walk. If we are not visible to Jupiter, much less can Venus be so, who is at a still greater distance;[45] and Mercury must be most out of its reach of all, being the smallest, and the most distant. However, the inhabitants can see Mars, their own four satellites, and Saturn with all his moons. Surely then they have planets enough to perplex their astronomers; nature, in kindness, has hid from them the rest. [Footnote 45: Venus is not farther from Jupiter, but more concealed by the rays of the sun.]