sight, went at once to the Observatory, and by the aid of glasses had a good view of the enterprising traveller.

In the January of the following year M. Blanchard performed the hazardous experiment of crossing the Channel in his balloon. He started from Dover, and after much difficulty landed near Calais. His countrymen were delighted at this feat, and the Parisians nicknamed him “Don Quichotte de la Manche." John Bull did not view this transit in quite the same spirit, for "The Air Balloon,” a new song, says:

"The Frenchman may boast of his feats in the sky,

But pray, who first taught the Monsieurs for to fly?
'Twas England, old England, we very well know,
For she's taught the same lesson to many a foe!
In the teaching, our tars have oft had a share,
And without a balloon sent them up in the air;

Or again, should they dare us to war, we would soon
Make the air of our guns fill the Frenchman's balloon!

Perhaps

At Covent Garden Theatre a new farce called Aerostation was produced, and "most favourably received by the Public."

But

"The main object of this petite pièce," says the dramatic critic, "is to ridicule the mania for Balloons. The farce contains much of the vis comica, and kept the house in continued laughter. Some little opposition was given by the Lunardian and Blanchardinian servants, who probably were planted there for the purpose. the loud plaudits of a British audience convinced them that the liberty of the English stage was not to be controlled by Italian and French adventurers." Miss Young, in the Epilogue to "Fashionable Levities," says:

"We've sailors now who plough the briny deep,

Through azure skies and rolling clouds they sweep:

Invade the Planets in an Air Balloon,

And fright from her propriety' the Moon."

Thus balloons were the talk of the town. The novelty of the invention set unscientific persons wondering as to how far ingenuity would go. We should sail through the air, fly at will with the same ease as birds machines were being made for these varied modes of progress, and wary speculators soon spied a fresh opening for the formation of fraudulent companies to promote this attractive mode of locomotion. One of the first of these was "The European Aeronautical Society," in which the first aerial ship, The Eagle, was to be constructed. This marvellous vessel was 160 feet long, 50 feet high, 40 feet wide, manned by a crew of 17-its design being "to establish direct communication between the several capitals of Europe." The first voyage was to be from London to Paris and back again; and the notice set forth that the aerial ship might "be viewed, from eight in the morning till dusk, in the Dock-yard of the Society at the entrance of Kensington, facing Kensington Gardens, near the First Turnpike from Hyde Park Corner. Admittance, one shilling. Subscription for the year, two guineas. In the three first voyages none but Yearly Subscribers admitted as Passengers on board."

Following in the wake of Lunardi and Blanchard came a crowd of minor luminaries; many of them falling victims from accidents or temerity. The case of one ill-starred sufferer, M. Pilâtre des Rosiers, was sadly romantic. Many Frenchmen were highly indignant that Blanchard should have started to cross the Channel from the cliffs of "perfidious Albion," and the hope was expressed that before long some patriotic rival might be found to repair this humiliating error. The task was suggested to an enterprising young aeronaut named Des Rosiers.

At

first he hesitated; but being urged to make the venture by an English girl with whom he had fallen in love, he and a comrade made the ascent from Boulogne on June 15th, 1785. They were swiftly carried across the Channel, but the wind suddenly veering they were as swiftly carried back again; and, while hanging over the land close by Boulogne, the balloon took fire and the unfortunate aeronauts, falling to the earth, were both killed. The poor girl whose ambition for her lover had led to this disaster, and who was probably a witness of the catastrophe, fell into convulsions and died a few days later.

A rapid growth often means a short life, and in Fashion one folly quickly displaces another. The wonder which science had created was, for the crowd

who ran mad over them, died away.

it, merely a novelty which, when its freshness was over, for

"The rage for gaping at balloons is past,

And pickpockets lament it did not last."

A new attraction soon caught the fickle taste of the Town. Balloons were abandoned and forgotten, and the but recently kindled interest in the progress of aeronautics was relegated to philosophers and savants. In science a light once struck is never permitted to completely die out; so that although, since the date we write of, the advancement in ballooning has seemed fitful and slow, every now and again there has been a rapid stride and an important discovery, raising the hope that success will come in time.

In this slight sketch it has been our intention neither to relate the good services done through balloons, nor to describe what a balloon is, or what sort of operations are involved in making a balloon voyage: these details may be read elsewhere, given by competent authorities. Our object has been to merely illustrate the mode in which a new science was received, and how it was turned into a Folly of Fashion.