Dodgeville chronicle. [volume] (Dodgeville, Wis.) 1862-current, 1872-10-11
Miscellany.
Ii5tAg MICROMEGA.

IN recent issue, AU the Year Bound
reproducess one of Voltaire's satirical
stories, which, though written over a cen
tury ago. is just as readable, and
probably as pointed in its wit and appli-
cation to-day as when first published. The
story is introduced insA0 the Year Round
by the following paragraph:
Francois Marie sArouet, wit, poet, dra-
matist, historian, philosopher, satirist,
speculator, man of science, man of affairs,
man of gallantry-who made for himself
the famous name Voltaire-found the
wiseacres of the French Academy of
Sciences droning off into the slumber of
self-complacency. They had decided 20
their complete satisfaction that there were
no other habitable worlds than ours, that
there were no inhabitants of the world
WORTH speaking of except Frenchmen,
that there were 20 Frenchmen besides
Parisians, and that there were no Parisians
deserving mention outside the Academy.
Vnltairc put this stinging nettIe into
their bed:
In. one of those huge planets which
wheel around Sirius, the dog-star, there
lived very intelligent young man,
whom | had the pleasure of meeting the
last time he visited the little ant-hill we
call earth. He was called Micromega, "a
name which, for that matter, well ex-
presses the comparative insignificance of
all great people. He was twenty-four
miles high. When | say twenty four
miles mean it; he measured hundred
and twenty thousand feet in his stock
ings.
Now,}place any geometrician in pos
session Of this gentleman's height, and he
1.afn CIT I<oNr LOTT hat
since q globe of twenty-five thousand
miles round produces man of about five
and a half feet high, theplanet which Mr..
Micromega inhabited must necessarily
have circumference just twenty-one
millions six hundred thousand times
greater than our tiny earth. Nature, you
see, ,eisA orderly and proportionate in all
her works.
Such being the height of his highness,
an artist~will readily ascertain that he
must have measured fifty thousand feet
round the waist whilst, since the nose is
third of the length of the human face,
and the face again the seventh part of the
height, it follows that the Sirian's nose
must have measured nearly mile and
a half in length. - - ~
AS for his mind, it was most highly
cultivated. He knew much, and invent
ed more. At the early age of two hun
dred and fifty he evolved more than fifty
3 new ewpropositions of Euclid from his own
internal consciousness. AS he advanced
to boyhood, at four hundred and fifty, he
took pleasure in rdissecting many of the
tiniest' insects, invisible to ordinary
microscopes, being no more than hun
dred feet long He composed learned
book about them, which made quite a
stir. But the king of his country, who
was both ignorant and crotchety, insisted
that the book inculcated heretieal and
erroneous doctrines, and sentenced the
author to be Ybanished from court for
eight hundred years. Micromega was
very little troubled at leaving court eel
ebrated for arrogant ignorance and servile
sh0e-licking. He wrote some smart YER
ses against the king and his courtiers, TO
the monarch's very considerable annoy
ance, and then set out on Journey from
planet to planet to form his mind. We
who dwell on a mere blot of mud, splash
from the great universe, and seldom con-
ceive Of anything beyond our own clouds,
can scarcely realize any form of locomo-
tion better than those with which we are
familiar But our traveller knew the law
of gravitation, and was alive to the ma
ture of the centrifugal and centripetal
AoICeS. by means OF fre CONDENSED from
sunbeams he obtained most powerful
motive force, without need of fuel, where
by he was enabled to fit from planet to
planet planet as bird hops from bough to
bough; He simply took fight, and after
rapid journey, aGghted on the planet
Saturn. M.icromega could scarcely re-
press smile at seeing the little globe and
its little people. For since Saturn is onlv
nine hundred times as large as the earth.
its Inhabitants are mere dwarfs of only
about "a mile high. But he had quite
sense enough not to ridicule man be-
cause he measured no more than FIVE thou
sand feet. Whenshe had done astonish-
ing the people he became familiar with
them, and soon formed an intimate friend.
ship ofrthe Secretary of the Academy OF
Sciences 1T maybe interesting to report
a singular conversation which took place
one day between ,Micromega and the Sa-
turnian: sSsft@7fs
Howsvaried is Nature in her waysf'
said Micromega, lounging into a seat.