Meanwhile we shall believe the poets.
The moon, then, is a lady, and a beauty. But loveliness, to be appreciated, should bear the stamp of rank. Many beautiful women grow up unadmired and unsought, because their parentage is obscure, and their station humble; while pert, vulgar faces pass for handsome, only because their possessors have also wealth and rank. A gilded frame makes a good picture in the eyes of nearly all the world.
Now the moon is not only a beauty, but she is somebody—one of the higher classes. She moves in an elevated sphere; is of aristocratic, nay, of royal blood. We have said enough. Each fair republican reader is propitiated, and for the ears of their fat papas we will whisper, “She is enormously rich, ’tis said”—by the poets. These gentlemen, whose imaginations, after all, are not one half so lively as those of Wall-street brokers, will tell you that the moon is all silver; that her rays are silver, and that they silver every thing they rest upon. However, this last assertion must not be construed literally by people who cannot bear disappointment very well. If some such sanguine person should leave a bogus dollar in the moonlight over night, expecting by these means to make it good coin and legal tender, he would be chagrined in the morning, unless somebody had been cheated into stealing the base metal, to find it a bogus dollar still. A dead gold-fish, exposed of a warm summer night to the same influence, will be sadly “changed,” as the housewifes express it, to be sure; but the transmutation will not be from gold to silver.
The ancestry and origin of the moon, though admitted to be highly respectable, are not so well known as some fastidious people might desire; and, as is usual where there is some mystery and uncertainty, there have been various and contradictory stories told by the divers persons who have undertaken to give us information on these points.
Moses tells us very briefly and positively, that she is twin sister of the sun, and that her birth-day was the 3d of January, in the year 0001. Since that time, with the sun for a partner, she has been constantly dancing attendance on the earth, ruling the night, while her brother, like the Grand Vizier of Algiers, has regulated the affairs of the Day. Once only have the twain rested from their labors. At the request of Joshua, who got somewhat belated in a skirmish with the Five Kings, some years ago, the sun stood still over Gibeon, while his sister reclined in the valley of Ajalon and fanned herself. We cannot tell certainly whether the moon has ever been able to recover from this delay, and catch up to the place in which she would have been if the detention had not happened. But an ingenious and learned Hibernian philosopher has very plausibly suggested, that she is still behind her time, and that this is the reason why she does not rise earlier of dark nights, for the illumination of which she was so evidently intended.
But the Mosaic account of the moon’s origin and early life is esteemed to be the more prosaic; and the poets, who have taken great pains to look into these matters, give greater credence to the Pagan historians.
She then, the heathens say, was the daughter of Hyperion and Thea, and the sister of the sun and of Aurora—not Aurora Borealis; she came of a northern family, and is but distantly related. The moon, like some other children we have heard of, was born of one of her aunts; so that if she had been sent to call her father to Thea, she could very properly have addressed him as Uncle Hy. Her sister, Aurora, it seems, was also her cousin-german, and with equal propriety she might have called her brother, “my dear sun,” or “Cousin Sol,” as the humor seized her.
The moon has ever been a favorite with lovers; albeit she herself is a maiden averse to matrimony. Like some dear, good old maids we wot of, she is no hindrance to flirtations, never stands in the way of love declarations, and has assisted at some runaway matches. She smiles pleasantly on the extravagances of enamored young people, winks at their follies, and knows, but never tells their secrets. We firmly believe that she has heard more than half the solemn vows which lovers have uttered since the world began, and has witnessed a large majority of first kisses. Had it not been for the delicious attractive power with which her rays are pregnant, many are, and have been, the married pairs that never would have been drawn together. Bashful youths gather courage from moonlight. Cold natures are fired by its subtle, latent heat. Proud hearts are fused by it into one. Ascetic resolves melt in the focus of the moon’s rays as easily as lead in a poacher’s ladle.
The moon has a peculiar fascination for dogs, too. Her influence upon the canine race is no less potent than that which she exercises over the feelings of human lovers. All the world over
“The waking dogs bark at the silent moon.”