Yet no such changes have ever been noticed. Nor even have such changes been remarked, as might occur in a mere brute mass without life;--the formation of new streams of lava, new craters, new crevices, new elevations. The Moon exhibits strong evidences, which strike all telescopic observers, of an action resembling, in many respects, volcanic action, by which its present surface has been formed.[2] But, if it have been produced by such internal fires, the fires seem to be extinguished; the volcanoes to be burned out. It is a mere cinder; a collection of sheets of rigid slag, and inactive craters. And if the Moon and the Earth were both, at first in a condition in which igneous eruptions from their interior produced the ridges and cones which roughen their surfaces; the Earth has had this state succeeded by a series of states of life in innumerable forms, till at last it has become the dwelling-place of man; while the Moon, smaller in dimensions, has at an earlier period completely cooled down, as to its exterior at least, without ever being judged fit or worthy by its Creator of being the seat of life; and remains, hung in the sky, as an object on which man may gaze, and perhaps, from which he may learn something of the constitution of the universe; and among other lessons this; that he must not take for granted, that all the other globes of the solar system are tenanted, like that on which he has his appointed place. 9. It is true, that in coming to this conclusion, the astronomers of whom I speak, have been governed by other reasons, besides those which I have mentioned, the absence of any changes, either rapid or slow, discoverable in the Moon's face. They have seen reason to believe that water and air, elements so essential to terrestrial life, do not exist in the Moon. The dark spaces on her disk, which were called _seas_ by those who first depicted them, have an appearance inconsistent with their being oceans of water. They are not level and smooth, as water would be; nor uniform in their color, but marked with permanent streaks and shades, implying a rigid form. And the absence of an atmosphere of transparent vapor and air, surrounding the moon, as our atmosphere surrounds the earth, is still more clearly proved, by the absence of all the optical effects of such an atmosphere, when stars pass behind the moon's disk, and by the phenomena which are seen in solar eclipses, when her solid mass is masked by the Sun.[3] This absence of moisture and air in the Moon, of course, entirely confirms our previous conclusion, of the absence of vegetable and animal life; and leaves us, as we have said, to examine the question for the other bodies, on their special grounds, without any previous presumption that such life exists. Undoubtedly the aspect of the case will be different in one feature, when we see reason to believe that other bodies have an atmosphere; and if there be in any planet sufficient light and heat, and clouds and