THE FIRST "POPULAR SCIENTIFIC TREATISE." 723 



evening, are applied to elucidate the constitution of the milky-way, in 

 which worlds are, it seems, so thick that the plausible suggestion is 

 made that their birds may fly from one to the other ! 



The remainder of the work is chiefly occupied with a description 

 of the heavenly bodies considered with reference to their possible 

 habitants, and here Fontenelle is not likely to be found tripping, for 

 as to the nature, ways, and modes of living, of the inhabitants of the 

 other planets, he is quite as well informed as we are. We shall find 

 here nearly all that can be said, in the simple absence of any knowl- 

 edge whatever on the point in question, but we may be more reason- 

 ably interested in the happiness of some conjectures offered, where 

 he incidentally speaks of the physical constitution of the bodies he 

 is considering. He tells us, for instance, that the rings of Saturn 

 are supposed to be composed of numberless little moons, close to- 

 gether, and moving in the same orbit ; an explanation which appears 

 to have been lost sight of till modern analysis showed that they 

 could not be continuous solids, and modern observation that they 

 could hardly be liquid or gaseous. We have passed over too readily, 

 perhaps, the purely speculative portion of the work, which, if not very 

 instructive, is certainly entertaining, and filled with felicitous illus- 

 trations, such as that (too long for quotation) of the citizen of Pans, 

 who maintains that St. -Denis, whose houses he can just distinguish 

 from the towers of Notre-Dame, is uninhabited, because he can see 

 no inhabitants. Or, for still another instance of this art of "scientific 

 insinuation " already referred to, take the passage where the mar- 

 chioness, after declaring herself dissatisfied with extravagant specu- 

 lations about the inhabitants of the planets, is told that something 

 positive is, after all, really known about a race on one of them, and 

 which appears from his description to be remarkable indeed. He 

 gives a minute, and, as he asserts, a trustworthy, account of these ex- 

 traordinary beings, who he would have us believe are most laborious 

 and skillful, yet live by pillage; who have no sex, yet increase as a 

 nation; who subsist in the happiest concord, yet periodically put to 

 death a portion of their innocent fellow-citizens ; and so on, until the 

 lady, who finds the story more incredible than any of the preceding 

 speculations, on learning what the race is, and on what planet they 

 exist, is forced to admit that truth may be stranger than fiction, and 

 that no extravagance of his fancies about the possible commonwealths 

 of other worlds surpasses what she has just been entrapped into lis- 

 tening to about that of the bees on our own. 



Fontenelle, with all his abundant ingenuity, has one radical defect 

 as a literary artist, and perhaps some will be disposed to add, as a 

 student of Nature. He appears to have no power of moving or being 

 moved by anything like emotion, or of perceiving anything not com- 

 prehensible to an intellect divorced from sympathetic intuition. The 

 gallantry which he introduces as an element in the dialogue, and 



