in a word, that a republican government could never be any thing but a rascally one.  While the philosophers, however, were busied in blushing at their stupidity in not having foreseen these inevitable evils, and intent upon the invention of new theories, the matter was put to an abrupt issue by a fellow of the name of Mob, who took every thing into his own hands and set up a despotism, in comparison with which those of the fabulous Zeros and Hellofagabaluses were respectable and delectable.  This Mob (a foreigner, by-the-by), is said to have been the most odious of all men that ever encumbered the earth.  He was a giant in stature —­ insolent, rapacious, filthy, had the gall of a bullock with the heart of a hyena and the brains of a peacock.  He died, at length, by dint of his own energies, which exhausted him.  Nevertheless, he had his uses, as every thing has, however vile, and taught mankind a lesson which to this day it is in no danger of forgetting —­ never to run directly contrary to the natural analogies.  As for Republicanism, no analogy could be found for it upon the face of the earth —­ unless we except the case of the “prairie dogs,” an exception which seems to demonstrate, if anything, that democracy is a very admirable form of government —­ for dogs.

April 6. —­ Last night had a fine view of Alpha Lyrae, whose disk, through our captain’s spy-glass, subtends an angle of half a degree, looking very much as our sun does to the naked eye on a misty day.  Alpha Lyrae, although so very much larger than our sun, by the by, resembles him closely as regards its spots, its atmosphere, and in many other particulars.  It is only within the last century, Pundit tells me, that the binary relation existing between these two orbs began even to be suspected.  The evident motion of our system in the heavens was (strange to say!) referred to an orbit about a prodigious star in the centre of the galaxy.  About this star, or at all events about a centre of gravity common to all the globes of the Milky Way and supposed to be near Alcyone in the Pleiades, every one of these globes was declared to be revolving, our own performing the circuit in a period of 117,000,000 of years!  We, with our present lights, our vast telescopic improvements, and so forth, of course find it difficult to comprehend the ground of an idea such as this.  Its first propagator was one Mudler.  He was led, we must presume, to this wild hypothesis by mere analogy in the first instance; but, this being the case, he should have at least adhered to analogy in its development.  A great central orb was, in fact, suggested; so far Mudler was consistent.  This central orb, however, dynamically, should have been greater than all its surrounding orbs taken together.  The question might then have been asked —­ “Why do we not see it?” —­ we, especially, who occupy the mid region of the cluster —­ the very locality near which, at least, must be situated this inconceivable central sun.  The astronomer,