Very
few newspaper men in the country are capable of offering a single
opinion regarding her that is worth reading. This is probably also the
reason why half-scientists talk so much dogmatic nonsense about her.
Enough, however, had appeared in the notes to warrant the general
opinion that Barbican's explorations had set at rest forever several pet
theories lately started regarding the nature of our satellite. He and
his friends had seen her with their own eyes, and under such favorable
circumstances as to be altogether exceptional. Regarding her formation,
her origin, her inhabitability, they could easily tell what system
_should_ be rejected and what _might_ be admitted. Her past, her
present, and her future, had been alike laid bare before their eyes. How
can you object to the positive assertion of a conscientious man who has
passed within a few hundred miles of _Tycho_, the culminating point in
the strangest of all the strange systems of lunar oreography? What reply
can you make to a man who has sounded the dark abysses of the _Plato_
crater? How can you dare to contradict those men whom the vicissitudes
of their daring journey had swept over the dark, Invisible Face of the
Moon, never before revealed to human eye? It was now confessedly the
privilege and the right of these men to set limits to that selenographic
science which had till now been making itself so very busy in
reconstructing the lunar world.
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