ny extent in
Europe; she is to be found chiefly in Polynesia, and among the
native races of North America. The _Middle Kingdom_ furnishes
the following allusion: "The universal legend of the man in the
moon takes in China a form that is at least as interesting as the ruder
legends of more barbarous people. The 'Goddess of the Palace of the
Moon,' Chang-o, appeals as much to our sympathies as, and rather
more so than, the ancient beldame who, in European folk-lore, picks
up perpetual sticks to satisfy the vengeful ideas of an ultra-Sabbatical
sect. Mr. G. C. Stent has aptly seized the idea of the Chinese
versifier whom he translates

"On a gold throne, whose radiating brightness
Dazzles the eyes--enhaloing the scene,
Sits a fair form, arrayed in snowy whiteness.
She is Chang-o, the beauteous Fairy Queen.
Rainbow-winged angels softly hover o'er her,
Forming a canopy above the throne;
A host of fairy beings stand before her,
Each robed in light, and girt with meteor zone.'" [62]

A touching tradition is handed down by Berthold that the moon is
Mary Magdalene, and the spots her tears of repentance. [63]
Fontenelle, the French poet and philosopher, saw a woman in the
moon's changes. "Everything," he says, "is in perpetual motion;
even including a certain young lady in the moon, who was seen with
a telescope about forty years ago, everything has considerably aged.
She had a pretty good face, but her cheeks are now sunken, her nose
is lengthened, her forehead and chin are now prominent to such an
extent, that all her charms have vanished, and I fear for her days."
"What are you relating to me now?" interrupted the marchioness.
"This is no jest," replied Fontenelle. "Astronomers perceived in the
moon a particular figure which had the aspect of a woman's head,
which came forth from between the rocks, and then occurred some
changes in this region. Some pieces of mountain fell, and disclosed
three points which could only serve to compose a forehead, a nose,
and an old woman's chin." [64] Doubtless the face and the
disfigurements were fictions of the author's lively imagination, and
his words savour less of science than of satire; but Fontenelle was
neither the first nor the last of those to whom "the inconstant moon
that monthly changes" has been an impersonation of the fickle and
the feminine. The following illustration is from Plutarch: "Cleobulus
said, As touching