much, and poured down a stream of hydrogen gas in selfrelief, which reached the little furnace of the fire-balloon, and the whole machine became presently one mass of flame. It was consumed in the air, as it descended, and with it, of course, the unfortunate Pilâtre de Rosier. The untimely fate of the Marquis d'Arlandes, his companion in the first ascent ever made in a balloon, was hastened by one of those circumstances which display the curious anomalies in human nature; he was broken for cowardice in the execution of his military duties, and is supposed to have committed suicide.

If we consider the shape, structure, appurtenances, and capabilities of a ship of early ages, and one of the present time, we must be struck with admiration at the great improvement that has been made, and the advantages that have been obtained; but balloons are very nearly what they were from the first, and are as much at the mercy of the wind for the direction they will take. Neither is there at present any certain prospect of an alteration in this condition. Their so-called " voyage" is little more than “ drifting," and can be no more, except by certain manœuvres which obtain precarious exceptions, such as rising to take the chance of different currents, or lowering a long and weighty rope upon the earth (an ingenious invention of Mr. Green's called the "guide-rope"), to be trailed along the ground. If, however, man is ever to be a flying animal, and to travel in the air whither he listeth, it must be by other means than wings, balloons, paddle-machines, and aerial ships-several of which are now building in America, in Paris, and in London. We do not doubt the mechanical genius of inventors—but the motive power. We will offer a few remarks on these projects before we conclude.

But let us, at all events, ascend into the sky! Taking

9

balloons as they are, "for better, for worse," as Mr. Green would say, let us for once have a flight in the air.

The first thing you naturally expect is some extracrdinary sensation in springing high up into the air, which takes away your breath for a time. But no such matter occurs. The extraordinary thing is, that you experience no sensation at all, so far as motion is concerned. So true is this, that on one occasion, when Mr. Green wished to rise a little above a dense crowd, in order to get out of the extreme heat and pressure that surrounded his balloon, those who held the ropes, misunderstanding his direction, let go entirely, and the balloon instantly rose, while the aëronaut remained calmly seated, wiping his forehead with a handkerchief, after the exertions he had undergone in preparing for the flight, and totally unconscious of what had happened. He declares that he only became aware of the circumstance, when, on reaching a considerable elevation (a few seconds are often quite enough for that), he heard the shouts of the multitude becoming fainter and fainter, which caused him to start up, and look over the edge of the car.

A similar unconsciousness of the time of their departure from earth has often happened to "passengers." A very amusing illustration of this is given in a letter published by Mr. Poole, the well-known author, shortly after his ascent. "I do not despise you," says he, "for talking about a balloon going up, for it is an error which you share in common with some millions of our fellow-creatures; and I, in the days of my ignorance, thought with the rest of you. I know better now. The fact is we do not go up at all; but at about five minutes past six on the evening of Friday, the 14th of September, 1838-at about that time, Vauxhall Gardens, with all the people in them, went down!" What

follows is excellent.

"I cannot have been deceived," says he; "I speak from the evidence of my senses, founded upon repetition of the fact. Upon each of the three or four experimental trials of the powers of the balloon to enable the people to glide away from us with safety to themselves -down they all went about thirty feet!—then, up they came again, and so on. There we sat quietly all the while in our wicker buck-basket, utterly unconscious of motion; till, at length, Mr. Green snapping a little iron, and thus letting loose the rope by which the earth was suspended to us-like Atropos, cutting the connexion between us with a pair of shears-down it went, with every thing on it; and your poor, paltry, little Duteh toy of a town (your Great Metropolis, as you insolently call it), having been placed on casters for the occasion-I am satisfied of that was gently rolled away from under us"*

Feeling nothing of the ascending motion, the first impresssion that takes possession of you in "going up" in a balloon, is the quietude—the silence, that grows more and more entire. The restless heaving to and fro of the huge inflated sphere above your head (to say nothing of the noise of the crowd), the flapping of ropes, the rustling of silk, and the creaking of the basket-work of the car-all has ceased. There is a total cessation of all atmospheric resistance. You sit in a silence which becomes more perfect every second. After the bustle of many moving objects, you stare before you into blank air. We make no observations on other sensations-to wit, the very natural one of a certain increased pulse, at being so high up, with a chance of coming down so suddenly, if any little matter went wrong.

* "Crotchets in the Air, or, an Un-scientific Account of a Balloon Trip," by John Poole, Esq. Colburn, 1838.

As all this will differ with different individuals, according to their nervous systems and imaginations, we will leave each person to his own impressions.

So much for what you first feel; and now what is the first thing you do? In this case everybody is alike. We all do the same thing. We look over the side of the car. We do this very cautiously-keeping a firm seat, as though we clung to our seat by a certain attraction of cohesionand then, holding on by the edge, we carefully protrude the peak of our travelling-cap, and then the tip of the nose, over the edge of the car, upon which we rest our mouth. Everything below is seen in so new a form, so flat, compressed, and simultaneously-so much too-much-at-a-time -that the first look is hardly so satisfactory as could be. desired. But soon we thrust the chin fairly over the edge, and take a good stare downwards; and this repays us much better. Objects appear under very novel circumstances from this vertical position, and ascending retreat from them (though it is they that appear to sink and retreat from us). They are stunted and foreshortened, and rapidly flattened to a map-like appearance; they get smaller and smaller, and clearer and clearer. "An idea," says Monck Mason, "involuntarily seizes upon the mind, that the earth with all its inhabitants had, by some unaccountable effort of nature, been suddenly precipitated from its hold, and was in the act of slipping away from beneath the aëronaut's feet into the murky recesses of some unfathomable abyss below. Everything, in fact, but himself, seems to have been suddenly endowed with motion." Away goes the earth, with all its objects-sinking lower and lower, and everything becoming less and less, but getting more and more distinct and defined as they diminish in size. But, besides the retreat towards minuteness, the phantasmagoria flattens as it

lessens-men and women are of five inches high, then of four, three, two, one inch-and now a speck; the Great Western is a narrow strip of parchment, and upon it you see a number of little trunks "running away with each other," while the Great Metropolis itself is a board set out with toys; its public edifices turned into "baby-houses, and pepper-casters, and extinguishers, and chess-men, with here and there a dish-cover-things which are called domes, and spires, and steeples!" As for the Father of Rivers, he becomes a dusky-grey, winding streamlet, and his largest ships are no more that flat pale decks, all the masts and rigging being foreshortened to nothing. We soon come now to the shadowy, the indistinct, and then all is lost in air. Floating clouds fill up all the space beneath. Lovely colours outspread themselves, ever-varying in tone, and in their forms or outlines-now sweeping in broad lines -now rolling and heaving in huge, richly, yet softlytinted billows-while sometimes, through a great opening, rift or break, you see a level expanse of grey or blue fields at an indefinite depth below. And all this time there is a noiseless cataract of snowy cloud-rocks falling around you -falling swiftly on all sides of the car, in great fleecy masses insmall snow-white and glistening fragments-and immense compound masses-all white, and soft, and swiftly rushing past you, giddily, and incessantly down, down, and all with the silence of a dream-strange, lustrous, majestic, incomprehensible!

Aëronauts, of late years, have become, in many instances, respectable and business-like, and not given to extravagant fictions about their voyages, which now, more generally, take the form of a not very lively log. But it used to be very different when the art was in its infancy, some thirty or forty years ago, and young balloonists in