Of volcanic origin, the moon is true to its descent. It is full of volcanoes, most of which, however, perhaps from a conviction of the uselessness of further action--there being nothing to destroy, and no one even to see their explosions--are now silent and torpid. But they wrought out their destiny so long and so faithfully, that the surface of the moon is frightfully disfigured and uneven. Switzerland is a prairie compared to the smoothest part of the moon's surface. It is nothing but incessant mountain and hollow. Lunar Alps and Rocky Mountains intersect every few miles of the surface. The Himalayas would be unnoticed among the gigantic ranges which ornament the lunar superficies. And the projections, mighty as they are, are but trifling in comparison with the hollows. It would seem as though the moon, with apish weakness, had tried to imitate the earth in throwing off space for rivers and oceans--forgetting that it contained no water to fill the cavities. Astronomers have made the most extraordinary discoveries in reference to these lunar hollows. Some of them appear to be about fifty miles deep, and a hundred miles or so wide, with precipitous sides; Mitchell has vividly described these terrible places. Those who have looked over a precipice a few hundred feet in depth may perhaps form some rude idea of what it must be to gaze down into a hole fifty miles deep--so deep that the bottom would almost escape the eye, were there an intervening atmosphere--a great, monstrous cave, with no vegetation either on the borders or on the top, or on the sides or on the bottom; no life of any kind, not even, the least sound, to break the endless monotony of silence--everywhere dull, warm scoriæ, lava, and stones of volcanic origin. But even these are the smallest of the lunar cavities. Latterly, acute astronomers, with improved instruments, have gazed into holes in the moon's surface, and estimated them to be no less than two hundred and fifty and three hundred miles deep, with fissures in them through which the sunlight penetrated. Fancy the scene! Well may it have been termed the abomination of desolation. Surely this fair earth, with all its gloomy places and all its dreary scenes, contains nothing so overwhelming in its terrible despair as the moon. And who, gazing at its mild white face as it emerges from the cover of a cloud, would deem it so sad and desolate a sphere? There are no "men in the moon," There cannot be, for they could not exist without air and water. 'Tis a pity, for the sight of this planet of ours, thirteen times the size which the moon appears to us, as fair, and bright, and shining as our nightly luminary, would be a sight worth seeing.