When this wonderful arrival was telegraphed at the metropolis, the world-parliament instantly met. It was resolved that a committee should be appointed at Lucetta, whose business should be, first, to learn the stranger’s language, and then to communicate to him a general description of Venus, and the leading facts in the history of her inhabitants, so as to enable him to bring before them the main points of agreement and difference in the conditions of life on the two planets. That these instructions were well carried out by the committee is manifest from the notes which have now been brought to light and translated into the English tongue. As soon as this preliminary process was completed, the doctor was requested in his turn to give the Hesperians an account of the affairs of the earth; of its physical condition; of its irrational animals, supposing such to exist; of its rational animals, one of which they had seen; and lastly, to answer the great question of questions—Whether the terrestrial rational beings had any direct knowledge of the Maker of the whole. On all of these points he delivered lectures in the cathedral of Lucetta, to a crowded audience of more than five thousand people. From the short notes in his pocket-book it is easy to gather his manner of treating the above subjects. Of course the reader will bear in mind the great intensity of his misanthropy. He began by describing the physical condition of the earth’s surface, and contrasting it, much to its disadvantage, with that of Hesperos. In illustration of his malignant remarks, he seems to have made much use of the great terrestrial charts which had been constructed at the observatories. The awful polar climate of the earth came out very unfavourably when compared with that of the corresponding regions of Hesperos; as did also the burning heat of the torrid zone, unprotected from the solar rays by a permanent screen of cloud. He dilated, with much relish, on the phenomena of earthquakes, volcanoes, thunder and lightning, deluges, droughts, great sandy deserts, and other terrestrial peculiarities of a disagreeable character, which were quite unknown to the Hesperians. As he approached the animal kingdom his spirits seem to have risen. The abundance on earth of loathsome and noxious types of animal life; their portentous fecundity; the formation of entire species which can live only by destroying and devouring the weaker and more defenceless, were happily contrasted with the innocent fauna of Hesperos, confined to a small number of harmless, frugivorous animals, in which the power of reproduction no more than sufficed to keep up the breed.