The works of Edgar Allan Poe; newly collected and edited, with a memoir, critical introductions, and notes, by Edmund Clarence Stedman and George Edward Woodberry; the illustrations by Albert Edward Sterner.

TALES OF PSEUDO-SCIENCE

never ceases to revolvefrom the east to the west, not upon
the poles of the Equinoctial, commonly called the poles of
the world, but upon those of the Zodiac, a question of
which I propose to speak more at length hereafter, when
I shall have leisure to refresh my memory in regard to the
astrology which I learned at Salamanca when young, and
have since forgotten."
Notwithstanding the blunders italicized, the book is not
without some claim to attention, as affording a naive specimen of the current astronomical notions of the time. One
of these assumed that the "gravitating power" extended
but a short distance from the earth's surface, and, accordingly, we find our voyager " carried insensibly around the
globe," &c.
There have been other "voyages to the moon," but
none of higher merit than the one just mentioned. That
of Bergerac is utterly meaningless. In the third volume
of the "American Quarterly Review " will be found quite
an elaborate criticism upon a certain "Journey" of the
kind in question;-a criticism in which it is difficult to
say whether the critic most exposes the stupidity of the
book, or his own absurd ignorance of astronomy. I forget
the title of the work; but the means of the voyage are
more deplorably ill-conceived than are even the ganzas
of our friend the Signor Gonzales. The adventurer, in
digging the earth, happens to discover a peculiar metal for
which the moon has a strong attraction, and straightway
constructs of it a box, which, when cast loose from its
terrestrial fastenings, flies with him, forthwith, to the
satellite. The "Flight of Thomas O'Rourke" is a jeu
d'esprit not altogether contemptible, and has been trans~
lated into German. Thomas, the hero, was, in fact, the
game-keeper of an Irish peer, whose eccentricities gave
rise to the tale. The "flight" is made on an eagle's
back, from Hungry Hill, a lofty mountain at the end of
Bantry Bay
In these various brochures the aim is always satirical.
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