37,000 miles, I entertained no expectation of
giving any one to understand--to know--to feel--how far from the Earth the
Moon actually _is_. 237,000 _miles_! There are, perhaps, few of my
readers who have not crossed the Atlantic ocean; yet how many of them
have a distinct idea of even the 3,000 miles intervening between shore
and shore? I doubt, indeed, whether the man lives who can force into his
brain the most remote conception of the interval between one milestone
and its next neighbor upon the turnpike. We are in some measure aided,
however, in our consideration of distance, by combining this
consideration with the kindred one of velocity. Sound passes through
1100 feet of space in a second of time. Now were it possible for an
inhabitant of the Earth to see the flash of a cannon discharged in the
Moon, and to hear the report, he would have to wait, after perceiving
the former, more than 13 entire days and nights before getting any
intimation of the latter.

However feeble be the impression, even thus conveyed, of the Moon's real
distance from the Earth, it will, nevertheless, effect a good object in
enabling us more clearly to see the futility of attempting to grasp such
intervals as that of the 28 hundred millions of miles between our Sun
and Neptune; or even that of the 95 millions between the Sun and the
Earth we inhabit. A cannon-ball, flying at the greatest velocity with
which such a ball has ever been known to fly, could not traverse the
latter interval in less than 20 years; while for the former it would
require 590.

Our Moon's real diameter is 2160 miles; yet she is comparatively so
trifling an object that it would take nearly 50 such orbs to compose one
as great as the Earth.

The diameter of our own globe is 7912 miles--but from the enunciation of
these numbers what positive idea do we derive?

If we ascend an ordinary mountain and look around us from its summit, we
behold a landscape stretching, say 40 miles, in every direction; forming
a circle 250 miles in circumference; and including an area of 5000
square miles. The extent of such a prospect, on account of the
_successiveness_ with which its portions necessarily present themselves
to view, can be only very feebly and very partially appreciated:--yet the
entire panorama would comprehend no more than one 40,000th part of the
mere _surface_ of our globe. Were this panorama, then, to be succeeded,
after the lapse of an hour, by another of equal exte