For the New-York Magazine.
Messrs Editors:
You have permission to publish the following amazing Discoveries. R-.
ASTRONOMICAL INTELLIGENCE.
IN the month of February, 1789, a most
excentric idea entered the head of
professor Zeritef Shoralow, of the royal
academy for celestial observations at
Moscow. He caused a tube of 234 feet
in length, and 29 feet in diameter, to
be constructed of planks, and made perfectly
smooth and circular within as the
interior part of a fuzee. Instead of
glass lens to furnish this enormous
telescope, and which no vitrisical
manufactory upon earth could supply, he
formed them from the purest, transparent
ice, carefully cut from the river Wolga.
These pieces were five feet in thickness,
and of the diameter of the cylinder.
Their proper diminutions he effected by
the application of warm substances. It
was not till after thirteen days unwearied
attention that they were perfectly
finished and rendered fit for optical
purposes.
This huge machine was constructed on a
hill adjacent to the city of Moscow,
and was suspended so mechanically nice,
that it could with ease be easily turned to any
part of the heavens.
It was on the 25th of February, in a night
uncommonly serene, that Professor Zeritef Shoralow,
wrapped in threefold thicknesses
of fur, turned his gigantic tube full on
the planet Jupiter; when, to his astonishment,
he found that immense frozen globe brought
as it were within reach of his hand for
inspection. The mountains, rivers, houses,
men, women, and even the very hens and
chickens were perfectly apparent.
Inured as the Muscovite was to ice and snow, the
shivering appearance that every thing put on at
near five hundred millions of miles
distance from the sun frighted him. The
sole employment of the men appeared to
consist in procuring fuel, and of the women
in heaping it on the fires.
Lovers confabulated swathed in redoubled flannels; and frequently, when the mutual
kiss was attempted a cement of ice completed
the contact.
From these frigid scenes, the astronomer,
shivering with sympathetic cold, turned his
telescope to glowing Mercury. Every thing
was in contrast to Jupiter. There eternal
frost held his dreary reign; every pulse beat low,
and life was almost afraid to avow its
existence. Here all was glowing sunshine and
hurly burly. Lawyers were worse than
loquacious; coquettes fidgeted in frenzy; and
the very ducks danced on the mud. The heat
appeared intense. Joints of meat were
roasted before the sun as on our globe at
a kitchen fire, and apple-pyes and custards
were baking on every stone wall. The
professor had already thrown off two of his
fur gowns when the planet Mars caught his
attention.
Ye that delight in blue coats with white or
scarlet facings, or gold or silver epaulets, red
feathers with black tops, or black feathers
with red tops; hats cocked, hats flopped, or infantry caps; muskets, small swords, broad swords,
bayonets, howitzers, royals, long twelves and forty eight pounders; behold a banquet for you all!
In this region every thing wore the appearance of hostility: Farmers plowed in gaters,
dropped feed corn from cartouch-boxes, and digged potatoes with spontoons.
The very women flew above in the stile militairie. Their
mops were made to resemble spunges, the rims
of their spinning-wheels looked like trucks, and
their sapawn-pots were thirteen inch shells.
Professor Zeritef Shoralow saw a love scene,
where the lady resisted as a beseiged citadel,
and the gallant made his approaches by
zig-zag and countermine.
"Hail happy region, where woman for once is
the governing animal, and men appear,
perhps as they ever ought, tagging humbly
in their rear! Charming Venus! thine is
the realm where masculinity dares not rear
its audacious front, but lovely femalism
is all in all!" Thus exclaimed the Russian
sage when the beauteus orb of Venus met
his enraptured eye.
In an elegant dome, where every lattice
and portal were thrown wide open, that all
might see and hear (for ladies love to
be heard & seen) were seated an assembly
of matrons to legislate for the community.
The speaker, in conformity to the order of
the house, was dressed in a rich purple
gown with a train of three yards in length;
a petticoat most tastefully flounced, a
camels hair shawl glittering with undulated
rows of diamonds, ear-rings of the purest
pearls, and a tete and bishop protuberant
and enchanting beyond description.
The secretary was observed to make her
minutes with a quill from the wing of a
sparow, and dipped her ink out of a reservoir
of real horn.
They appeared to be in warm debate; and the
professor, by looking at a paper over the
shoulder of a lady dressed in cross-barred
muslin, found the subject to be, whether
the men in future might be entertained as
obsequious humble companions, or, be driven
absolutely out of doors, and employed in
unremitted drudery. A major appeared for the
latter measure; but the satirical Shoralow
could not help remarking, that several very
engaging damsels offered their services as
overseers of the poor Yahoos.
Love, and all its delectable concomitants
were utterly unknown there; as that passion
exists but where equality is found or
understood. The dear virago's had thrust
the wretched males too far from them to
admit of even an artificial reciprocity of
situation.
Many philosophers assert that love in the
female aeconomy acts as a powerful absorbent;
and, that where it is genuinely felt a
thousand disagreeable pettishnesses are perfectly unknown.
Zeritof Shoralow, it is said, now inclines
to this opinion from the multiplicity of
not very bewitching freaks he observed
among the Venusian ladies.
Besides caprice, petulancy & ill-nature,
the want of personal attention was general. Where
there was no admirer to please, nor rival
to mortify, to what purpose even the
affection of amiability?
The accurate Muscovite in the memoir
addressed to his college, has observed,
that the female, on this planet from
imperial women down to the humble
mosquito, had uncontended domination.
The ferocious heifer gored the bull from the
pasture; rams fled before heroic ewes;
the tremendous goose stalked before the
suppliant gander; and champion hens
crowed over dejected he-biddies.
The enlightened Shoralow was going on
with observations to gratify and enrich
his native planet, when a southern
breeze blew mildly on him - warm
vapours floated far and wide - and a
trickling stream was all that remained
of materials that drew such unexpected
information from our neighbour worlds.
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