7. Is, then, the Moon inhabited? From the moon's proximity to us, (she is distant only thirty diameters of the earth, less than ten times the earth's circumference; a railroad carriage, at its ordinary rate of travelling, would reach her in a month,) she can be examined by the astronomer with peculiar advantages. The present powers of the telescope enable him to examine her mountains as distinctly as he could the Alps at a few hundred miles distance, with the naked eye; with the additional advantage that her mountains are much more brilliantly illuminated by the Sun, and much more favorably placed for examination, than the Alps are. He can map and model the inequalities of her surface, as faithfully and exactly as he can those of the surface of Switzerland. He can trace the streams that seem to have flowed from eruptive orifices over her plains, as he can the streams of lava from the craters of Etna or Hecla. 8. Now, this minute examination of the Moon's surface being possible, and having been made, by many careful and skilful astronomers, what is the conviction which has been conveyed to their minds, with regard to the fact of her being the seat of vegetable or animal life? Without exception, it would seem, they have all been led to the belief, that the Moon is not inhabited; that she is, so far as life and organization are concerned, waste and barren, like the streams of lava or of volcanic ashes on the earth, before any vestige of vegetation has been impressed upon them: or like the sands of Africa, where no blade of grass finds root. It is held, by such observers, that they can discern and examine portions of the moon's surface as small as a square mile;[1] yet, in their examination, they have never perceived any alteration, such as the cycle of vegetable changes through the revolutions of seasons would produce. Sir William Herschel did not doubt that if a change had taken place on the visible part of the Moon, as great as the growth or the destruction of a great city, as great, for instance, as the destruction of London by the great fire of 1666, it would have been perceptible to his powers of observation. Yet nothing of the kind has ever been observed. If there were lunar astronomers, as well provided as terrestrial ones are, with artificial helps of vision, they would undoubtedly be able to perceive the differences which the progress of generations brings about on the surface of our globe; the clearing of the forests of Germany or North America; the embankment of Holland; the change of the modes of culture which alter the color of the ground in Europe; the establishment of great nests of manufactures which shroud portions of the land in smoke, as those which have their centres at Birmingham or at Manchester. However obscurely they might discern the nature of those changes, they would still see that change was going on. And so should we, if the like changes were going on upon the face of the Moon.