A more minute description follows, of the dress of the male and female lunarians, especially of that of the latter, to which we can merely refer the reader.  There is one portion, however, of the inhabitants, with whom the reader must be made acquainted, inasmuch as they form some of the author’s most prominent characters.  A large number of lunarians, it seems, are born without any intellectual vigour, and wander about like so many automatons, under the care of the government, until illumined by the mental ray, from some terrestrial brain, through the mysterious influence which the moon is known to exercise on our planet.  But, in this case, the inhabitant of the earth loses what he of the moon gains, the ordinary portion of understanding being divided between two; and, “as might be expected, there is a most exact conformity between the man of the earth, and his counterpart in the moon, in all their principles of action, and modes of thinking:”—­

“These Glonglims, as they are called, after they have been thus imbued with intellect, are held in peculiar respect by the vulgar, and are thought to be in every way superior to those whose understandings are entire.  The laws by which two objects, so far apart, operate on each other, have been, as yet, but imperfectly developed, and the wilder their freaks, the more they are the objects of wonder and admiration.”

“Now and then, though very rarely, the man of the earth regains the intellect he has lost; in which case, his lunar counterpart returns to his former state of imbecility.  Both parties are entirely unconscious of the change—­one, of what he has lost, and the other, of what he has gained."[7]

The belief of the influence of the moon on the human intellect, the Brahmin remarks, may be perceived in the opinions of the vulgar, and in many of the ordinary forms of expression; and he takes occasion to remark, that these very opinions, as well as some obscure hints in the Sanscrit, give countenance to the idea, that they were not the only voyagers to the moon; but that, on the contrary, the voyage had been performed in remote antiquity; and the Lunarians, we are told, have a similar tradition.  Many ordinary forms of expression are adduced in support of these ideas.

“Thus,” says the Brahmin, “it is generally believed, throughout all Asia, that the moon has an influence on the brain:  and when a man is of insane mind, we call him a lunatic.  One of the curses of the common people is, ‘May the moon eat up your brains!’ and in China, they say of a man who has done any act of egregious folly, ’He was gathering wool in the moon.’” I was struck with these remarks; and told the hermit that the language of Europe afforded the same indirect evidence of the fact he mentioned,—­that my own language, especially, abounded with expressions which could be explained on no other hypothesis:  for, besides the terms “lunacy,” “lunatic,” and the supposed influence of the moon on the brain,