Chapter XLVII: "the Village of Schwartz-Ach." (5)

Time wore on. One fine morning I was packed, along with a couple of boxes, on the top of the London coach; and before forty-eight hours had elapsed, found myself bound apprentice to a hard-working master and a laborious profession in the heart of London. Seven years I served and wrought in acquiring the art and mystery, as my indentures termed it, of my trade. Seven times in the course of this period it was my pleasant privilege to visit Midvale, where some of my relations dwelt, and at each visit I renewed the intimacy with my old school-fellow, Griffith. He was qualifying himself for the life of a gentleman by leading one of idleness; and I envied him not a little his proficiency in the use of the angle and the gun, and the opportunity he occasionally enjoyed of following the hounds upon a borrowed horse. At my last visit, at the end of my term of apprenticeship, I felt rather hurt at the cold reception his mother gave me, and at the very haughty, off-hand bearing of Griffith himself; and I resolved to be as independent as he by giving him an opportunity of dropping the acquaintance if he chose. I understood, however, that both he and his mother were still feeding upon expectation, and that they hoped every thing from General ----, to whom application had been made on Griffith's behalf, as the son of an officer, and that they confidently expected a cadetship that would open up the road to promotion and fortune. The wished-for appointment did not arrive. Poor Griffith's father had died without leaving that reputation behind him which might have paved the way for his son's advancement, and the application was not complied with. This was a mortifying blow to the mother, whose pride it painfully crushed. Griffith, now of age, proposed that they should remove to London, where, living in the very source and centre of official appointments, they might bring their influence to bear upon any suitable berth that might be vacant. They accordingly left Midvale and came to town, where they lived in complete retirement upon a very limited income. I met Griffith accidentally after he had been in London about a year. He shook me heartily by the hand, was in high spirits, and informed me that he had at length secured the promise of an appointment to a situation in S----House, in case T----, the sitting member, should be again returned for the county. His mother had three tenants, each with a vote, at her command; and he was going down to Midvale, as the election was shortly coming off, and would bag a hundred votes, at least, he felt sure, before polling-day. I could not help thinking as he rattled away, that this was just the one thing he was fit for. With much of the air, gait, and manners of a gentleman, he combined a perfection in the details of fiddle-faddle and small talk rarely to be met with; and from having no independent opinion of his own upon any subject whatever, was so much the better qualified to secure the voices of those who had. He went down to Midvale, canvassed the whole district with astonishing success, and had the honor of dining with his patron, the triumphant candidate, at the conclusion of the poll. On his return to town, in the overflowings of his joy, he wrote a note to me expressive of his improved prospects, and glorying in the certainty of at length obtaining an official appointment. I was very glad to hear the good news, but still more surprised at the terms in which it was conveyed; the little that Griffith had learned at school he had almost contrived to lose altogether in the eight or nine years that had elapsed since he had left it. He seemed to ignore the very existence of such contrivances as syntax and orthography; and I really had grave doubts as to whether he was competent to undertake even an official situation in S---- House.

These doubts were not immediately resolved. Members of parliament, secure in their seats, are not precisely so anxious to perform as they sometimes are ready to promise when their seats seem sliding from under them. It was very nearly two years before Griffith received any fruit from his electioneering labors, during which time he had been leading a life of lounging, do-nothing, dreamy semi-consciousness, occasionally varied by a suddenly-conceived and indignant remonstrance, hurled in foolscap at the head of the defalcating member for the county. During all this time fortune used him but scurvily: his mother's tenants at Midvale clamored for a reduction of rent; one decamped without payment of arrears; repairs were necessary, and had to be done and paid for. These drawbacks reduced the small income upon which they lived, and sensibly affected the outward man of the gentlemanly Griffith: he began to look seedy, and occasionally borrowed a few shillings of me when we casually met, which he forgot to pay. I must do him the credit to say that he never avoided me on account of these trifling debts, but with an innate frankness characteristic of his boyhood, continued his friendship and his confidences. At length the happy day arrived. He received his appointment, bearing the remuneration of L200 a year, which he devoutly believed was to lead to something infinitely greater, and called on me on his way to the office where he was to be installed and indoctrinated into his function.

The grand object of her life--the settlement of her son--thus accomplished, the mother returned to Midvale, where she shortly after died, in the full conviction that Griffith was on the road to preferment and fortune. The little estate--upon the proceeds of which she had frugally maintained herself and son--passed, at her death, into the hands of one of her brothers, none of whom took any further notice of Griffith, who had mortally offended them by his instrumentality in returning the old member for the county, whom it was their endeavor to unseat. There is a mystery connected with Griffith's tenure of office which I could never succeed in fathoming. He held it but for six months, when, probably not being competent to keep it, he sold it to an advertising applicant, who offered a douceur of L300 for such a berth. How the transfer was arranged I can not tell, not knowing the recondite formula in use upon these occasions. Suffice it to say that Griffith had his L300, paid his little debts, renewed his wardrobe and his expectations, and began to cast about for a new patron. He was now a gentleman about town, and exceedingly well he both looked and acted the character: he had prudence enough to do it upon an economical scale, and though living upon his capital, doled it out with a sparing hand. As long as his money lasted he did very well; but before the end of the third year the bloom of his gentility had worn off, and it was plain that he was painfully economizing the remnant of his funds.

About this time I happened to remove to a different quarter of the metropolis, and lost sight of him for more than a year. One morning, expecting a letter of some importance, I waited for the postman before walking to business. What was my astonishment on responding personally to his convulsive "b'bang," to recognize under the gold-banded hat and red-collared coat of that peripatetic official the gentlemanly figure and features of my old schoolfellow Griffith Maclean!

"What! Griff?" I exclaimed: "is it possible?--can this be you?"

"Well," said he, "I am inclined to think it is. You see, old fellow, a man must do something or starve. This is all I could get out of that shabby fellow T---- and I should not have got this had I not well worried him. He knows I have no longer a vote for the county. However, I shan't wear this livery long: there are good berths enough in the post-office. If they don't pretty soon give me something fit for a gentleman to do, I shall take myself off as soon as any thing better offers. But, by George? there is not much time allowed for talking: I must be off--farewell!"

Soon after this meeting the fourpenny deliveries commenced; and these were before long followed by the establishment of the universal Penny-post. This was too much for Griffith. He swore he was walked off his legs; that people did nothing upon earth but write letters; that he was jaded to death by lugging them about; that he had no intention of walking into his coffin for the charge of one penny; and, finally, that he would have no more of it. Accordingly he made application for promotion on the strength of his recommendation, was refused as a matter of course, and vacated his post for the pleasure of a week's rest, which he declared was more than it was honestly worth.

By this time destiny had made me a housekeeper in "merry Islington;" and poor Griff, now reduced to his shifts, waited on me one morning with a document to which he wanted my signature, the object of which was to get him into the police force. Though doubting his perseverance in any thing, I could not but comply with his desire, especially as many of my neighbors had done the same. The paper testified only as to character; and as Griff was sobriety itself, and as it would have required considerable ingenuity to fasten any vice upon him, I might have been hardly justified in refusing. I represented to him as I wrote my name, that should he be successful, he would really have an opportunity of rising by perseverance in good conduct to an upper grade. "Of course," said he, "that is my object; it would never do for a gentleman to sit down contented as a policeman. I intend to rise from the ranks, and I trust you will live to see me one day at the head of the force."

He succeeded in his application; and not long after signing his paper I saw him indued with the long coat, oil-cape, and glazed hat of the brotherhood, marching off in Indian file for night-duty to his beat in the H---- Road. Whether the night air disagreed with his stomach, or whether his previous duty as a postman had made him doubly drowsy, I can not say, but he was found by the inspector on going his rounds in a position too near the horizontal for the regulations of the force, and suspended, after repeated trangression, for sleeping upon a bench under a covered doorway while a robbery was going on in the neighborhood. He soon found that the profession was not at all adapted to his habits, and had not power enough over them to subdue them to his vocation. He lingered on for a few weeks under the suspicious eye of authority, and at length took the advice of the inspector, and withdrew from the force.

He did not make his appearance before me as I expected, and I lost sight of him for a long while. What new shifts and contrivances he had recourse to--what various phases of poverty and deprivation he became acquainted with during the two years that he was absent from my sight, are secrets which no man can fathom. I was standing at the foot of Blackfriar's Bridge one morning waiting for a clear passage to cross the road, and began mechanically reading a printed board, offering to all the sons of Adam--whom, for the especial profit of the slopsellers, Heaven sends naked into the world--garments of the choicest broadcloth for next to nothing, and had just mastered the whole of the large-printed lie, when my eye fell full upon the bearer of the board, whose haggard but still gentlemanly face revealed to me the lineaments of my old friend Griff. He laughed in spite of his rags as our eyes met, and seized my proffered hand.

"And what," said I, not daring to be silent, "do they pay you for this?"

"Six shillings a week," said Griff, "and that's better than nothing."

"Six shillings and your board of course?"

"Yes, this board" (tapping the placarded timber); "and a confounded heavy board it is. Sometimes when the wind takes it, though, I'm thinking it will fly away with me into the river, heavy as it is."

"And do you stand here all day?"

"No, not when it rains: the wet spoils the print, and we have orders to run under cover. After one o'clock I walk about with it wherever I like, and stretch my legs a bit. There's no great hardship in it if the pay was better."

I left my old playmate better resigned to his lowly lot than I thought to have found him. It was clear that he had at length found a function for which he was at least qualified; that he knew the fact; and that the knowledge imparted some small spice of satisfaction to his mind. I am happy to have to state that this was the deepest depth to which he has fallen. He has never been a _sandwich_--I am sure indeed he would never have borne it. With his heavy board mounted on a stout staff, he could imagine himself, as no doubt he often did, a standard-bearer on the battle-field, determined to defend his colors with his last breath; and his tall, gentlemanly, and somewhat officer-like figure, might well suggest the comparison to a casual spectator. But to encase his genteel proportions in a surtout of papered planks, or hang a huge wooden extinguisher over his shoulders labeled with colored stripes--it would never have done: it would have blotted out the gentleman, and therefore have worn away the heart of one whose shapely gentility was all that was left to him.

One might have thought, after all the vicissitudes he had passed through, that the soul of Griffith Maclean was dead to the voice of ambition. Not so, however. On the first establishment of the street-orderlies, that chord in his nature spontaneously vibrated once again. If he could only get an appointment it would be a rise in the social scale--leading by degrees--who can tell?--to the resumption of his original status, or even something beyond.... I hear a gentle knock, a modest, low-toned single dab, at the street-door as I am sitting down to supper on my return home after the fatigues of business. Betty is in no hurry to go to the door, as she is poaching a couple of eggs, and prides herself upon performing that delicate operation in irreproachable style. "Squilsh!" they go one after another into the saucepan--I hear it as plainly as though I were in the kitchen. Now the plates clatter; the tray is loading; and now the eggs are walking up stairs, steaming under Betty's face, when "dab" again--a thought, only a thought louder than before--at the street-door. The spirit of patience is outside; and now Betty runs with an apology for keeping him waiting. "Here's a man wants to speak to master; says he'll wait if you are engaged, sir; he ain't in no hurry." "Show him in;" and in walks Griff, again armed with a document--a petition for employment as a street-orderly, with testimonials of good character, honesty, and all that. Of course I again append my signature, without any allusion to the police force. I wish him all success, and have a long talk over past fun and follies, and present hopes and future prospects, and the philosophy of poverty and the deceitfulness of wealth. We part at midnight, and Griff next day gets the desiderated appointment.

It is raining hard while I write, and by the same token I know that at this precise moment Griffith in his glazed hat, and short blouse, and ponderous mud-shoes, is clearing a channel for the diluted muck of C---- street, city, and directing the black, oozy current by the shortest cut to the open grating connected with the common sewer. I am as sure as though I were superintending the operation, that he handles his peculiar instrument--a sort of hybrid between a hoe and a rake--with the grace and air of a gentleman--a grace and an air proclaiming to the world that though _in_ the profession, whatever it may be called, which he has assumed, he is not _of_ it, and vindicating the workmanship of nature, who, whatever circumstances may have compelled him to become, cast him in the mould of a gentleman. It is said that in London every man finds his level. Whether Griffith Maclean, after all his vicissitudes, has found his, I do not pretend to say. Happily for him, he thinks that fortune has done her worst, and that he is bound to rise on her revolving wheel as high at least as he has fallen low. May the hope stick by him, and give birth to energies productive of its realization!

THE PLEASURES AND PERILS OF BALLOONING.

It would appear that, in almost every age, from time immemorial, there has been a strong feeling in certain ambitious mortals to ascend among the clouds. They have felt with Hecate--

"Oh what a dainty pleasure 'tis
To sail in the air!"

So many, besides those who have actually indulged in it, have felt desirous of tasting the "dainty pleasure" of a perilous flight, that we are compelled to believe that the attraction is not only much greater than the inducement held out would leave one to expect, but that it is far more extensive than generally supposed. Eccentric ambition, daring, vanity, and the love of excitement and novelty, have been quite as strong impulses as the love of science, and of making new discoveries in man's mastery over physical nature. Nevertheless, the latter feeling has, no doubt, been the main-stay, if not the forerunner and father of these attempts, and has held it in public respect, notwithstanding the many follies that have been committed.

To master the physical elements, has always been the great aim of man. He commenced with earth, his own natural, obvious, and immediate element, and he has succeeded to a prodigious extent, being able to do (so far as he knows) almost whatever he wills with the surface; and, though reminded every now and then by some terrible disaster that he is getting "out of bounds" has effected great conquests amidst the dark depths beneath the surface. Water and fire came next in requisition; and by the process of ages, man may fairly congratulate himself on the extraordinary extent, both in kind and degree, to which he has subjected them to his designs--designs which have become complicated and stupendous in the means by which they are carried out, and having commensurate results both of abstract knowledge and practical utility. But the element of air has hitherto been too subtle for all his projects, and defied his attempts at conquest. That element which permeates all earthly bodies, and without breathing which the animal machine can not continue its vital functions--into that grand natural reservoir of breath, there is every physical indication that it is not intended man should ascend as its lord. Traveling and voyaging man must be content with earth and ocean;--the sublime highways of air, are, to all appearance, denied to his wanderings.

Wild and daring as was the act, it is no less true that men's first attempts at a flight through the air were literally with wings. They conjectured that by elongating their arms with a broad mechanical covering, they could convert them into wings; and forgetting that birds possess air-cells, which they can inflate, that their bones are full of air instead of marrow, and, also, that they possess enormous strength of sinews expressly for this purpose, these desperate half-theorists have launched themselves from towers and other high places, and floundered down to the demolition of their necks, or limbs, according to the obvious laws and penalties of nature. We do not allude to the Icarus of old, or any fabulous or remote aspirants, but to modern times. Wonderful as it may seem, there are some instances in which they escaped with only a few broken bones. Milton tells a story of this kind in his "History of Britain;" the flying man being a monk of Malmsbury, "in his youth." He lived to be impudent and jocose on the subject, and attributed his failure entirely to his having forgotten to wear a broad tail of feathers. In 1742 the Marquis de Bacqueville announced that he would fly with wings from the top of his own house on the _Quai des Theatins_ to the garden of the _Tuileries_. He actually accomplished half the distance, when, being exhausted with his efforts, the wings no longer beat the air, and he came down into the Seine, and would have escaped unhurt, but that he fell against one of the floating machines of the Parisian laundresses, and thereby fractured his leg. But the most successful of all these instances of the extraordinary, however misapplied, force of human energies and daring, was that of a certain citizen of Bologna, in the thirteenth century, who actually managed, with some kind of wing contrivance, to fly from the mountain of Bologna to the River Reno, without injury. "Wonderful! admirable!" cried all the citizens of Bologna. "Stop a little!" said the officers of the Holy Inquisition; "this must be looked into." They sat in sacred conclave. If the man had been killed, said they, or even mutilated shockingly, our religious scruples would have been satisfied; but, as he has escaped unhurt, it is clear that he must be in league with the devil. The poor "successful" man was therefore condemned to be burnt alive; and the sentence of the Holy Catholic Church was carried into Christian execution.

That flying, however, could be effected by the assistance of some more elaborate sort of machinery, or with the aid of chemistry, was believed at an early period. Friar Bacon suggested it; so did Bishop Wilkins, and the Marquis of Worcester; it was likewise projected by Fleyder, by the Jesuit Lana, and many other speculative men of ability. So far, however, as we can see, the first real discoverer of the balloon was Dr. Black, who, in 1767, proposed to inflate a large skin with hydrogen gas; and the first who brought theory into practice were the brothers Montgolfier. But their theory was that of the "fire-balloon," or the formation of an artificial cloud, of smoke, by means of heat from a lighted brazier placed beneath an enormous bag, or balloon, and fed with fuel while up in the air. The Academy of Sciences immediately gave the invention every encouragement, and two gentlemen volunteered to risk an ascent in this alarming machine.

The first of these was Pilatre de Rosier, a gentleman of scientific attainments, who was to conduct the machine, and he was accompanied by the Marquis d'Arlandes, an officer in the Guards. They ascended in the presence of the Court of France, and all the scientific men in Paris. They had several narrow escapes of the whole machine taking fire, but eventually returned to the ground in safety. Both these courageous men came to untimely ends subsequently. Pilatre de Rosier, admiring the success of the balloon afterward made by Professor Charles, and others, (_viz._, a balloon filled with hydrogen gas), conceived the idea of uniting the two systems, and accordingly ascended with a large balloon of that kind, having a small fire-balloon beneath it--the upper one to sustain the greater portion of the weight, the lower one to enable him to alter his specific gravity as occasion might require, and thus to avoid the usual expenditure of gas and ballast. Right in theory--but he had forgotten one thing. Ascending too high, confident in his theory, the upper balloon became distended too much, and poured down a stream of hydrogen gas, in self-relief, 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 Pilatre 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 manoeuvres 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 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 extraordinary 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 aeronaut 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 can not 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 connection between us with a pair of shears--down it went, with every thing on it; and your poor, paltry, little Dutch 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."[13]

Feeling nothing of the ascending motion, the first impression 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 basketwork 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. 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 every body 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 cohesion--and then, holding on by the edge, we carefully protrude the peak of our traveling-cap, and then the tip of the nose, over the edge of the car, upon which we rest our mouth. Every thing 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 downward; 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 aeronaut's feet into the murky recesses of some unfathomable abyss below. Every thing, 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 every thing becoming less and less, but getting more and more distinct and defined as they diminish in size. But, besides the retreat toward 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-gray, winding streamlet, and his largest ships are no more than 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 colors 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 softly-tinted billows--while sometimes, through a great opening, rift, or break, you see a level expanse of gray 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--in small 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.

Aeronauts, 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 indulged in romantic fancies. We do not believe that there was a direct intention to tell falsehoods, but that they often deceived themselves very amusingly. Thus, it has been asserted, that when you attained a great elevation, the air became so rarefied that you could not breathe, and that small objects, being thrown out of the balloon, could not fall, and stuck against the side of the car. Also, that wild birds, being taken up and suddenly let loose, could not fly properly, but returned immediately to the car for an explanation. One aeronaut declared that his head became so contracted by his great elevation, that his hat tumbled over his eyes, and persisted in resting on the bridge of his nose. This assertion was indignantly rebutted by another aeronaut of the same period, who declared that, on the contrary, the head expanded in proportion to the elevation; in proof of which he stated, that on his last ascent he went so high that his hat burst. Another of these romantic personages described a wonderful feat of skill and daring which he had performed up in the air. At an elevation of two miles, his balloon burst several degrees above "the equator" (meaning, above the middle region of the balloon), whereupon he crept up the lines that attached the car, until he reached the netting that inclosed the balloon; and up this netting he clambered, until he reached the aperture, into which he thrust--not his head--but his pocket handkerchief! Mr. Monck Mason, to whose "Aeronautica" we are indebted for the anecdote, gives eight different reasons to show the impossibility of any such feat having ever been performed in the air. One of these is highly graphic. The "performer" would change the line of gravitation by such an attempt: he would never be able to mount the sides, and would only be like the squirrel in its revolving cage. He would, however, pull the netting round--the spot where he clung to, ever remaining the lowest--until having reversed the machine, the balloon would probably make its _escape_, in an elongated shape, through the large interstices of that portion of the net-work which is just above the car, when the balloon is in its proper position! But the richest of all these romances is the following brief statement:--A scientific gentleman, well advanced in years (who had "probably witnessed the experiment of the restoration of a withered pear beneath the exhausted receiver of a pneumatic machine") was impressed with a conviction, on ascending to a considerable height in a balloon, that every line and wrinkle of his face had totally disappeared, owing, as he said, to the preternatural distension of his skin; and that, to the astonishment of his companion, he rapidly began to assume the delicate aspect and blooming appearance of his early youth!

These things are all self-delusions. A bit of paper or a handkerchief might cling to the outside of the car, but a penny-piece would, undoubtedly, fall direct to the earth. Wild birds do not return to the car, but descend in circles, till, passing through the clouds, they see whereabouts to go, and then they fly downward as usual. We have no difficulty in breathing; on the contrary, being "called upon," we sing a song. Our head does not contract, so as to cause our hat to extinguish our eyes and nose; neither does it expand to the size of a prize pumpkin. We see that it is impossible to climb up the netting of the balloon over-head, and so do not think of attempting it; neither do we find all the lines in our face getting filled up, and the loveliness of our "blushing morning" taking the place of a marked maturity. These fancies are not less ingenious and comical than that of the sailor who hit upon the means of using a balloon to make a rapid voyage to any part of the earth. "The earth spins round," said he, "at a great rate, don't it? Well, I'd go up two or three miles high in my balloon, and then 'lay to,' and when any place on the globe I wished to touch at, passed underneath me, down I'd drop upon it."

But we are still floating high in air. How do we feel all this time? "Calm, sir--calm and resigned." Yes, and more than this. After a little while, when you find nothing happens, and see nothing likely to happen (and you will more especially feel this under the careful conduct of the veteran Green), a delightful serenity takes the place of all other sensations--to which the extraordinary silence, as well as the pale beauty and floating hues that surround you, is chiefly attributable. The silence is perfect--a wonder and a rapture. We hear the ticking of our watches. Tick! tick!--or is it the beat of our own hearts? We are sure of the watch; and now we think we can hear both.

Two other sensations must, by no means, be forgotten. You become very cold, and desperately hungry. But you have got a warm outer coat, and traveling boots, and other valuable things, and you have not left behind you the pigeon-pie, the ham, cold beef, bottled ale and brandy.

Of the increased coldness which you feel on passing from a bright cloud into a dark one, the balloon is quite as sensitive as you can be; and, probably, much more so, for it produces an immediate change of altitude. The expansion and contraction which romantic gentlemen fancied took place in the size of their heads, does really take place in the balloon, according as it passes from a cloud of one temperature into that of another.

We are now nearly three miles high. Nothing is to be seen but pale air above--around--on all sides, with floating clouds beneath. How should you like to descend in a parachute?--to be dangled by a long line from the bottom of the car, and suddenly to be "let go," and to dip at once clean down through those gray-blue and softly rose-tinted clouds, skimming so gently beneath us? Not at all: oh, by no manner of means--thank you! Ah, you are thinking of the fate of poor Cocking, the enthusiast in parachutes, concerning whom, and his fatal "improvement," the public is satisfied that it knows every thing, from the one final fact--that he was killed. But there is something more than that in it, as we fancy.

Two words against parachutes. In the first place, there is no use to which, at present, they can be applied; and, in the second, they are so unsafe as to be likely, in all cases, to cost a life for each descent. In the concise words of Mr. Green, we should say--"the best parachute is a balloon; the others are bad things to have to deal with."

Mr. Cocking, as we have said, was an enthusiast in parachutes. He felt sure he had discovered a new, and the true, principle. All parachutes, before his day, had been constructed to descend in a concave form, like that of an open umbrella; the consequence of which was, that the parachute descended with a violent swinging from side to side, which sometimes threw the man in the basket in almost a horizontal position. Mr. Cocking conceived that the converse form; viz., an inverted cone (of large dimensions), would remedy this evil; and becoming convinced, we suppose, by some private experiments with models, he agreed to descend on a certain day. The time was barely adequate to his construction of the parachute, and did not admit of such actual experiments with a sheep, or pig, or other animal, as prudence would naturally have suggested. Besides the want of time, however, Cocking equally wanted prudence; he felt sure of his new principle; this new form of parachute was the hobby of his life, and up he went on the appointed day (for what aeronaut shall dare to "disappoint the Public?")--dangling by a rope, fifty feet long, from the bottom of the car of Mr. Green's great Nassau Balloon.

The large upper rim of the parachute, in imitation, we suppose, of the hollow bones of a bird, was made of hollow tin--a most inapplicable and brittle material; and besides this, it had two fractures. But Mr. Cocking was not to be deterred; convinced of the truth of his discovery, up he would go. Mr. Green was not equally at ease, and positively refused to touch the latch of the "liberating iron," which was to detach the parachute from the balloon. Mr. Cocking arranged to do this himself, for which means he procured a piece of new cord of upward of fifty feet in length, which was fastened to the latch above in the car, and led down to his hand in the basket of the parachute. Up they went to a great height, and disappeared among the clouds.

Mr. Green had taken up one friend with him in the car; and, knowing well what would happen the instant so great a weight as the parachute and man were detached, he had provided a small balloon inside the car, filled with atmospheric air, with two mouth-pieces. They were now upward of a mile high.

"How do you feel, Mr. Cocking?" called out Green. "Never better, or more delighted in my life," answered Cocking. Though hanging at fifty feet distance, in the utter silence of that region, every accent was easily heard. "But, perhaps you will alter your mind?" suggested Green. "By no means," cried Cocking; "but, how high are we?"--"Upward of a mile."--"I must go higher, Mr. Green--I must be taken up two miles before I liberate the parachute." Now, Mr. Green, having some regard for himself and his friend, as well as for poor Cocking, was determined not to do any such thing. After some further colloquy, therefore, during which Mr. Green threw out a little more ballast, and gained a little more elevation, he finally announced that he could go no higher, as he now needed all the ballast he had for their own safety in the balloon. "Very well," said Cocking, "if you really will not take me any higher, I shall say good-by."

At this juncture Green called out, "Now, Mr. Cocking, if your mind at all misgives you about your parachute, I have provided a tackle up here, which I can lower down to you, and then wind you up into the car by my little grapnel-iron windlass, and nobody need be the wiser."--"Certainly not," cried Cocking; "thank you all the same. I shall now make ready to pull the latch-cord." Finding he was determined, Green and his friend both crouched down in the car, and took hold of the mouth-pieces of their little air-balloon. "All ready?" called out Cocking. "All ready!" answered the veteran aeronaut above. "Good-night, Mr. Green!"--"Good-night, Mr. Cocking!"--"A pleasant voyage to you, Mr. Green--good-night!"

There was a perfect silence--a few seconds of intense suspense--and then the aeronauts in the car felt a jerk upon the latch. It had not been forcible enough to open the liberating iron. Cocking had failed to detach the parachute. Another pause of horrid silence ensued.

Then came a strong jerk upon the latch, and in an instant, the great balloon shot upward with a side-long swirl, like a wounded serpent. They saw their flag clinging flat down against the flag-staff, while a torrent of gas rushed down upon them through the aperture in the balloon above their heads, and continued to pour down into the car for a length of time that would have suffocated them but for the judgmatic provision of the little balloon of atmospheric air, to the mouth-pieces of which their own mouths were fixed, as they crouched down at the bottom of the car. Of Mr. Cocking's fate, or the result of his experiment, they had not the remotest knowledge. They only knew the parachute was gone!

The termination of Mr. Cocking's experiment is well known. For a few seconds he descended quickly, but steadily, and without swinging--as he had designed, and insisted would be the result--when, suddenly, those who were watching with glasses below, saw the parachute lean on one side--then give a lurch to the other--then the large upper circle collapsed (the disastrous hollow tin-tubing having evidently broken up), and the machine entered the upper part of a cloud: in a few more seconds it was seen to emerge from the lower part of the cloud--the whole thing turned over--and then, like a closed-up broken umbrella, it shot straight down to the earth. The unfortunate, and, as most people regard him, the foolish enthusiast, was found still in the basket in which he reached the earth. He was quite insensible, but uttered a moan; and in ten minutes he was dead.

Half a word in favor of parachutes. True, they are of no use "at present;" but who knows of what use such things may one day be? As to Mr. Cocking's invention, the disaster seems to be attributable to errors of detail, rather than of principle. Mr. Green is of opinion, from an examination of the _broken_ latch-cord, combined with other circumstances, which would require diagrams to describe satisfactorily, that after Mr. Cocking had failed to liberate himself the first time, he twisted the cord round his hand to give a good jerk, forgetting that in doing so, he united himself to the balloon above, as it would be impossible to disengage his hand in time. By this means he was violently jerked into his parachute, which broke the latch-cord; but the tin tube was not able to bear such a shock, and this caused so serious a fracture, in addition to its previous unsound condition, that it soon afterward collapsed. This leads one to conjecture that had the outer rim been made of strong wicker-work, or whale-bone, so as to be somewhat pliable, and that Mr. Green had liberated the parachute, instead of Mr. Cocking, it would have descended to the earth with perfect safety--skimming the air, instead of the violent oscillations of the old form of this machine. We conclude, however, with Mr. Green's laconic--that the safest parachute is a balloon.

But here we are--still above the clouds! We may assume that you would not like to be "let off" in a parachute, even on the improved principle; we will therefore prepare for descending with the balloon. This is a work requiring great skill and care to effect safely, so as to alight on a suitable piece of ground, and without any detriment to the voyagers, the balloon, gardens, crops, &c.

The valve-line is pulled!--out rushes the gas from the top of the balloon--you see the flag fly upward--down through the clouds you sink faster and faster--lower and lower. Now you begin to see dark masses below--there's the Old Earth again!--the dark masses now discover themselves to be little forests, little towns, tree-tops, house-tops--out goes a shower of sand from the ballast-bags, and our descent becomes slower--another shower, and up we mount again, in search of a better spot to alight upon. Our guardian aeronaut gives each of us a bag of ballast, and directs us to throw out its contents when he calls each of us by name, and in such quantities only as he specifies. Moreover, no one is suddenly to leap out of the balloon, when it touches the earth; partly because it may cost him his own life or limbs, and partly because it would cause the balloon to shoot up again with those who remained, and so make them lose the advantage of the good descent already gained, if nothing worse happened. Meantime, the grapnel-iron has been lowered, and dangling down at the end of a strong rope of a hundred and fifty feet long. It is now trailing over the ground. Three bricklayers' laborers are in chase of it. It catches upon a bank--it tears its way through. Now the three bricklayers are joined by a couple of fellows in smock-frocks, a policeman, five boys, followed by three little girls, and, last of all, a woman with a child in her arms, all running, shouting, screaming, and yelling, as the grapnel-iron and rope go trailing and bobbing over the ground before them. At last the iron catches upon a hedge--grapples with its roots; the balloon is arrested, but struggles hard; three or four men seize the rope, and down we are hauled, and held fast till the aerial Monster, with many a gigantic heave and pant, surrenders at discretion, and begins to resign its inflated robust proportions. It subsides in irregular waves--sinks, puffs, flattens--dies to a mere shriveled skin; and being folded up, like Peter Schlemil's shadow, is put into a bag, and stowed away at the bottom of the little car it so recently overshadowed with its buoyant enormity.

We are glad it is all over; delighted, and edified as we have been, we are very glad to take our supper at the solid, firmly-fixed oak table of a country inn, with a brick wall and a barn-door for our only prospect, as the evening closes in. Of etherial currents, and the scenery of infinite space, we have had enough for the present.

Touching the accidents which occur to balloons, we feel persuaded that in the great majority of cases they are caused by inexperience, ignorance, rashness, folly, or--more commonly than all--the necessities attending a "show." Once "announced" for a certain day, or _night_ (an abominable practice, which ought to be prevented)--and, whatever the state of the wind and weather, and whatever science and the good sense of an experienced aeronaut may know and suggest of imprudence--up the poor man must go, simply because the public have paid their money to see him do it. He must go, or he will be ruined.

But nothing can more strikingly display the comparative safety which is attained by great knowledge, foresight, and care, than the fact of the veteran, Charles Green, being now in the four hundred and eighty-ninth year of his balloonical age; having made that number of ascents, and taken up one thousand four hundred and thirteen persons, with no fatal accident to himself, or to them, and seldom with any damage to his balloons.

Nevertheless, from causes over which he had no control, our veteran has had two or three "close shaves." On one occasion he was blown out to sea with the Great Nassau balloon. Observing some vessels, from which he knew he should obtain assistance, he commenced a rapid descent in the direction of the Nore. The valve was opened, and the car first struck the water some two miles north of Sheerness. But the wind was blowing fresh, and, by reason of the buoyancy of the balloon, added to the enormous surface it presented to the wind, they were drawn through the water at a speed which set defiance to all the vessels and boats that were now out on the chase. It should be mentioned, that the speed was so vehement, and the car so un-boat-like, that the aeronauts (Mr. Green and Mr. Rush, of Elsenham Hall, Essex) were dragged through, that is _under_, every wave they encountered, and had a good prospect of being drowned upon the surface. Seeing that the balloon could not be overtaken, Mr. Green managed to let go his large grapnel-iron, which shortly afterward took effect at the bottom, where, by a fortunate circumstance (for them) there was a sunken wreck, in which the iron took hold. The progress of the balloon being thus arrested, a boat soon came up, and relieved the aeronauts; but no boat could venture to approach the monster balloon, which still continued to struggle, and toss, and bound from side to side. It would have capsized any boat that came near it, in an instant. It was impossible to do any thing with it till Mr. Green obtained assistance from a revenue cutter, from which he solicited the services of an armed boat, and the crew fired muskets with ball-cartridge into the rolling Monster, until she gradually sank down flat upon the waves, but not until she had been riddled with sixty-two bullet holes.