At the first glance on the star-picture thus taken, I knew that I was successful. Jupiter shone like the nucleus of a comet, even before a second power was upon it. As picture after picture was formed, belts of the most exquisite hues surrounded the luminous planet, which seemed rolling up to me, hurled from lens to lens, as if wrested from its orbit by a commanding force. Plainer and plainer grew its surface; mountain-ranges, without crags or chasms, smooth and undulating, emerged; it was zoned with a central sunlit sea. On each scene of the panorama I lingered, and each was retained as well as the poor materials would allow. I was cautious enough to take two pictures of each distinct phase,--one to keep, if this happy voyage should be my last, and the other of course as the subject from which a centre should be selected for a new expansion. At last there stood plainly before my eye a tower!--a tower, slender and high, with curved dome, the work of Art! A cry burst from my lips,--I fainted with joy. Afraid to touch the instrument with my trembling hand, I walked the floor, imploring back my nervous self-possession. Fixing the tower by photograph, I took the centre of its dome as the next point for expansion. Slowly, slowly, as if the fate of a solar system depended on each turn of the screw, I drew on the final view. An instant of gray confusion,--another of tremulous crystallization,--and, scarcely in contact with the tower's dome, as if about to float from it, hovered an aerial ship, with two round balls suspended above it. Again one little point was taken, for I felt that this was not the culmination of my vision; and now two figures appeared, manifestly human, but their features and dress as yet undistinguishable. Another turn, and I looked upon the face of a glorious man! Another, and the illusion, Space, shrank away beneath my feet, my eye soared over her abysses, and gazed into the eye of an immortal. But now,--oh, horror!--turning back to earth, I remembered that I had not analyzed the precious liquid which could so link world with world. Seized with a sudden agony, I tried to strain one least drop more; but, alas! the power had perished from the earth! For this loss I deserve all that has happened to me. My haste to fulfil my life's object proved me the victim of a mental lust, and I saw why the highest truth is not revealed: simply, it awaits those who can receive and not be intoxicated by it. And now the planet which I had disobeyed for another avenges itself,--seeing, naturally, in strange results, whose methods are untraceable, nothing but monomania. The photographs, in which the pollens of two planet-flowers mingle, lie in my attic, dust-eaten:--"Above all, the patient must not see anything of _that_ kind," has been the order ever since I published a card announcing my discovery to my fellow-citizens.