LESSON X.
THE QUEEN OF THE NIGHT.
“That orbèd maiden, with white fire laden,Whom mortals call the moon,Glides glimmering o’er my fleece-like flow,By the midnight breezes strewn.”
“That orbèd maiden, with white fire laden,Whom mortals call the moon,Glides glimmering o’er my fleece-like flow,By the midnight breezes strewn.”
“That orbèd maiden, with white fire laden,Whom mortals call the moon,Glides glimmering o’er my fleece-like flow,By the midnight breezes strewn.”
“That orbèd maiden, with white fire laden,
Whom mortals call the moon,
Glides glimmering o’er my fleece-like flow,
By the midnight breezes strewn.”
—Shelley,The Cloud.
No orb in the sky has attracted more attention than the moon. Beautiful names have been given to this lesser light that rules the night, and poets have sung some of their sweetest songs, and artists have painted some of their finest pictures, to depict the wonderful charm of moonlight. The moon is in our minds associated with peace, silence, rest; the silver radiance causes no pain to the eyes, and like charity, while revealing objects, it adds to their beauty, and subdues defects. Much that by the light of day seems harsh and ugly appears picturesque and fascinating in the delicate splendor of the moonlight. Of moonlight rather than sunset might the poet sing:—
“The splendor falls on castle wallsAnd snowy summits old in story,The long light shakes across the lakes,And the wild cataract leaps in glory.”
“The splendor falls on castle wallsAnd snowy summits old in story,The long light shakes across the lakes,And the wild cataract leaps in glory.”
“The splendor falls on castle wallsAnd snowy summits old in story,The long light shakes across the lakes,And the wild cataract leaps in glory.”
“The splendor falls on castle walls
And snowy summits old in story,
The long light shakes across the lakes,
And the wild cataract leaps in glory.”
Those nations who have worshipped the sun as god of the day, have paid similar worship to the moon as goddess of the night. The ancient myths spoke of the moon as a pure and lonely maiden, fond of silence, hunting, and theforest shades. Increasing knowledge has shown us the moon as neither goddess nor maiden, but as a satellite of the earth, from which many ages ago it was cast off into space, and by the attraction of which it is held as by invisible and unbreakable chains.
Being so much nearer to us than any other heavenly body, the moon was one of the earliest and best understood, and to it, about two hundred and fifty years ago, the first telescopes were turned with eager expectations of wonderful discoveries. The moon, at the nearest point in its orbit, is distant from us about two hundred and twenty-five thousand miles, only about twenty-eight times the diameter of the earth. Those travellers, who have again and again made the circuit of the earth, have in the aggregate passed over a greater distance than lies between us and the moon. Steam could take us there in less than a year; but if the man in the moon should begin to pelt stones at the earth, they would hit their mark in a little less than three days and two hours.
Shining large and fair in the heavens, the moon seems, as a queen, to lead forth the hosts of the stars, but if we watch its course each of the twenty-seven days which it requires for its journey around the earth, we shall see that it continually falls behind the progress of the shining hosts, and possesses a motion entirely independent of them. The moon, like the earth, shines by the reflected light of the sun, and this causes the lunar or moon phases. Thus sometimes we see the full moon; then by slowly lessening degrees, which we call waning, we see the half, and the quarter, and the little crescent, or octant. Then we lose sight of the moon, andagain it becomes visible as a slim crescent, the hornèd moon it is called, and so waxes to the full. In the circle which the moon describes about our earth, the moon passes between us and the sun once in about thirty days, and so presents us a dark side, which is called the new moon. In fifteen days more it is on the opposite side of the earth from the sun, and shows us its entire disk illuminated, which we call full moon; passing still about us, in fifteen days after full moon, having changed from full to gibbous, and to the third quarter, half, and second quarter, once more we are presented with the slim octant of the hornèd moon.
Generally the moon in its orbit passes a little above or below the disk of the sun, but sometimes it moves exactly across the face of the sun, and so occasions an eclipse of the sun. Again, sometimes the moon, as it passes behind the earth, comes within the cone of shadow cast by the earth, and so an eclipse of the moon, either total or partial, is caused.
There are many nights when we say “there is no moon.” We should not understand by this that the moon is not in the sky; the simple fact is that in the progression of its rising, the moon has come to a time when she moves during the day through the part of the heavens that is visible to us. So sometimes toward sunset, we see the moon high in the sky, and during part of the day, when the nights are moonless, we see the moon when not obscured by the greater light of the sun.
In all these various changes of its life, if we study the moon with telescopes, we shall find it to be a globe, opaque, lit up by the sun, having mountains and valleys on its surface.Those dark lines and spots which with the naked eye we see on the full moon, are ranges of volcanic mountains. The surface of the moon has been mapped out by astronomers, who have given names to the various eminences and depressions, and from a study of the moon much has been learned of planets in general. For, while the moon is so small a body and has its orbit around the earth, which is its centre of attraction, it is not to be considered as a mere satellite, but is to be respectfully ranked among the planets.
There have been many foolish myths about the moon: its ray has been considered poisonous to sleepers; the full moon has been regarded as a source of disease and madness, and has been supposed to affect the growth of plants, the medicinal properties of herbs, and the fortunes of human lives. The moon owes all these slanders to its nearness to us.
In size the moon is about one-fourth the diameter of the earth, and its volume is but one-fiftieth that of our planet. The days and nights of the moon are not twelve hours long, but three hundred and sixty hours, equal, therefore, to fifteen of our twenty-four hour days. Only a little more than one side, or face, of the moon is ever seen by us. There have been many romantic fancies about what may be on the other side of the moon, but probably the side we do not see is very similar to the side which we do see.
What is the past history of the moon? The first condition of any planet is that of burning vapor or gas, which must slowly cool and form a nucleus of solid or half-fluid matter. It is evident that the smaller the planet the more rapidly it will cool and become solid, and the greater theplanet the longer it will remain in a partly fluid state. Thus Jupiter and Saturn will require much longer time to cool than Mercury or Venus. The sun, being by far the largest body in our system, will be gaseous or semi-fluid long after all the planets which he cast into space have cooled and hardened; while the moon, being one of the smallest planets, hardened long before the great planets, and before the earth. Thus the sun is still in the early stages of its existence, and the moon has run the course of its changes and is a burnt-out and aged world.
No doubt the stages of moon-building were very like those of earth-building, with variations due to the much smaller size of the sphere. The nucleus would partially solidify, there would be a hardened crust which at intervals would crush in from the withdrawal of interior molten matter, or would be suddenly torn and flung up by the pressure of boiling lava from within. The condensing atmosphere no doubt sent down water upon the moon, but by long degrees the heated volcanic surface has parted with its seas, and we find the map of the moon now presenting us not with oceans, but empty sea-beds, volcano craters, and strange and arid depressions.
The moon has no atmosphere; no rain falls on her barren surface; no clouds move above her; no tempests howl in her caverns; no snows crown her volcanic peaks; no sunsets shine in gorgeous colors; there are no violet and crimson skies at dawn. The moon is the kingdom of eternal calm, and sleep, and stillness. If any blow disturbs the lunar surface, it is from the fall of meteors rained upon it through space. It isto our atmosphere we owe the glories of the clouds, the beneficence of waters, the magic of frost changes, the rush of storms, the balmy breezes, the sky.
As it has no seas and no air, it follows that the moon has no sky. The lovely blue we see above us, is merely caused by many miles of air, but from the moon one would merely look away into immensity; and day, and night, sun, moon, stars, comets, and meteors could not be seen, while instead of the lovely blue dome above us, where stars innumerable shine and tremble, space, as seen from the moon, is a perpetual, limitless, black abyss.
We have found the moon destitute of both air and water; it is evident that it is also destitute of all vegetation; in fact of all life. As there is darkness above, so there is silence below. The moon is a desert land where no foliage rustles, where no flowers bloom, where no bird builds or sings. No feet climb the lofty mountains, or explore the gaping craters of moon-land. No voice causes an echo in the vast yawning caves that penetrate moon-mountains.
A curious fact about these mountains in the moon is that they are annular or ring-shaped. They are skeleton mountains, burnt-out craters, mighty hollow cones thrust up, so that if one might climb to the top of a moon-mountain, he could walk around the rim, as a fly walks around the edge of a cup; or he could go down, down, down, on the inside to the level of the plain from which he began his ascent.
The surface of the moon changes, not by the motions of life and growth, but by a slow decay; for changes in the moon’s face are occasioned by the crumbling of mountainsand the falling down of lands. Thus we see the moon to be a dumb, dead, deserted planet, wheeling on in its orbit around the earth, and carried with the earth in its greater orbit around the sun. Silvery sweet and fair, this queen of the night is a planet that long, long ago passed its childhood and its prime, and fell, in its old age, a prey to fire.