Adventures in the Moon, and Other Worlds

by Earl John Russell Russell

I next entered a building filled with the unavailing projects of Englishmen, and spent a short time in examining these enterprises, which are political, moral, religious, mechanical, and chemical. The collection has been much enriched by recent contributions. Many excellent designs of the present age for the benefit of England and the rest of the world are here honourably preserved. I saw numerous projects for making morality: every virtue had some contrivance to be practised by; and these schemes appeared very easy of execution, requiring nothing for their success except the universal concurrence of mankind in receiving them.

I found here plans for dispensing with all laws, and extinguishing crime by a general resolution of men in favour of virtue, for preventing the birth of children by argument, for discontinuing war throughout the world, for converting all nations to the true religion, that is, the religion of the projector.

Amongst all the noble schemes that I saw here, I most admired those which were not content with the improvement of England, but designed the good of the whole world, such as the plan last mentioned, for including all the inhabitants of the globe in one religion. The means of effecting so great a work were not described, but the inventor of this unanimity was said to have devised so infallible a project, that for spreading truth over the earth he required nothing but a steam vessel, and undertook by a few tons of coal to convince all mankind.

I saw many other English schemes for the welfare of distant nations, so that not a people was to remain vicious, ignorant, or oppressed. In examining these ample designs, I felt a secret pride in the noble spirit of some amongst my countrymen; and it appeared to me that nothing has been so much improved in modern times as the virtue of humanity. Men were formerly satisfied with relieving the distresses which they saw and heard; but there is now a large body of men in England who busy themselves with the troubles of distant nations, and consider all sufferings on the farther side of the globe as their own calamities. It is well known how many persons of all ranks in England pined away under the lashes inflicted upon the negroes in the West Indies. Others could not be cheerful as long as Greece was under the dominion of Turkey; and another party, who were not concerned either about Greece or the negroes, regarded themselves as the most unfortunate of men because in India widows sometimes burned themselves at the funerals of their husbands. How would one of the ancient moralists admire the dismay which has been caused in England by the conflagration of an old woman in the East!

It is observable that one who is thoroughly inspired with this remote pity disdains to do a kindness in his own hemisphere, and despises that superficial humanity which makes us supply the wants of those who are immediately round us. He can only pity at a distance, and feels compassion in proportion to the number of leagues that intervene between him and the sufferer. He can see with firmness the starvation of those who live near him, but shudders to think that a man may be hungry two thousand miles off. Thus he claims a share in the misery of every man at a sufficient distance: a lash inflicted on the other side of the Atlantic makes a mark upon his back—he is flogged with the negro, enslaved with the Greek, and burned to ashes with the Indian widow.

I had now been wandering in our satellite almost a fortnight, according to the earth, and almost a day according to the moon, for I arrived there in the morning, and the day was now almost ended. I have not related all that I saw, but selected a few of the most remarkable places that I visited; nor have I instructed the world in what manner I provided for my own personal comforts, according to the practice of many travellers, who rescue every one of their meals from oblivion, and never eat or drink without recording it. I have also omitted all mention of the moon's inhabitants, because they are to be fully described by other travellers.

When I left the House of Projects, I was informed that I was very near to the Valley of Lost Time, and I hastened towards it, that I might observe whatever was there, before it should be dark. I descended into the valley, and found myself surrounded by the sounds of innumerable clocks. These sounds did not proceed from any visible mechanism, but lived in the air like the other preserved clamours. They are the ghosts of minutes and hours that have perished. It was remarkable that in this confused clamour, every man knew his own time, and could distinguish the hours he had lost when he heard them struck; yet he knew not what it was that discovered them to him: all were alike in sound; only at the striking of particular hours, he was seized with a conviction that he heard his own time.

There were many persons in the valley, and I observed that some of them heard their own lost hours with great emotion. They turned pale, trembled, and were overpowered by the reproach. And not only could a man discern his own losses amongst these sounds, but knew what particular hour or minute of his past life he was listening to, which very much aggravated the rebuke. Men heard the striking of the very crisis which might have saved, enriched, or advanced them. In some men the emotion from these sounds continued a long time, others soon recovered themselves.

I saw two or three running about in chase of their time with a hat, as a boy follows a butterfly. The hours were very nimble, escaping by an irregular flight, and the pursuit was long continued in vain. At last one of these men succeeded in the capture of a portion of time, which he had followed with much perseverance. The chase being finished close to me, I heard the stifled hours striking under his hat. As he had been present in the room of lost spirits when I had shown the means of recovering mirth from the phial containing it, he had contracted a high opinion of my skill and invention in rendering available these regained prizes, and he now earnestly consulted me about the means of making the time under his hat serve the purpose which it ought to have been applied to before. He told me he was a London tradesman, and not very prosperous, through the misapplication of three particular days which he now had in captivity. A few years ago he had been in pursuit of a rich widow, from whom though he had extorted no promise, yet he had been convinced that she was waiting only till a decorous time had elapsed since her first husband. But this confidence ruined him: he was absent three days with some friends; and on returning to his vocation found the lady had so much resented his neglect of office as to supply his place with another candidate, whom soon after she married. "Now," he continued, "I have caught these three days, and here they are, but still I know not how to make them answer my purpose. However, since you, sir, could restore a lady her spirits out of a phial, perhaps you can restore me my widow from under a hat."

"I fear," said I, "your case is beyond my skill; for I know not how the noise under your hat can by any artifice prevent the widow from having been married as you remember. Whatever use you make of these sounds, I fear you must still have misemployed the three days and lost the widow. It appears to me, that the only way of retrieving lost time is to make better use of what remains; I therefore advise you to make diligent search for another rich widow, and when you have found one, remember you are not to have a respite of three days."