could be put in reference to any man, it might surely be applied to him, for he has had the honour of ascending higher than any other mortal from Icarus to Gay-Lussac. MM. Flammarion, Fonvielle, and Tissandier are all enthusiasts in the matter of ballooning; the second of these gentlemen having expressed his willingness to be shot up into the air in connection with a sky-rocket, provided its projectile force could be duly regulated and a proper parachute were attached. In the narratives of their numerous ascents, there is necessarily some degree of sameness; but the whole are not only thoroughly readable, but thoroughly enjoyable to the last. The illustrations to the book are really superb. As a mere portfolio of sky-sketches, it is well worth the price. Not unreasonably indeed, one of the writers expresses his hope that the work will form a kind of epoch in the history of the subject, 'for it is the first time that artists have gone up in balloons for the purpose of familiarizing the eyes of the public with a series of aerial scenes.' We have charts of triple texture, showing, first, the path of the machine through the air; secondly, the geography of the country over which it passed; and thirdly, the gradations of light and darkness during the expedition, these being so arranged as to answer point for point. We have also pictures in which the balloon is seen in almost every phase of adventure—sweeping through the clouds, plodding through the snow, cruising amongst the stars by night, exploding in the sky, plunging into the sea, dragging on the ground, caught in the trees, stranded amongst the sheepfolds, or tumbling upon the coast and struggling madly to escape the pursuing billows. But we have also some gorgeous views of cloud-land, with its marvellous scenery; now silvered with the pale radiance of the moon or the stars, now drenched in the golden glories of the setting sun—at one time darkening into night under the gathering thunderstorm, at another fantastically illuminated with haloes and many-tinted spectra; and through all these wonderful fields of air, a tiny sphere, a mere bubble of the sky, with a bubble or two of human breath attached, may be seen pursuing its noiseless way as if it had escaped for ever from this turbulent earth.
Before we start, however, the great question is, Dare we start at all? Well might the first aerial navigator, like the anonymous hero qui fragilem, truci commisit pelago ratem primus, shudder at his own audacity as he launched his miserable vessel upon the untraversed deep. When it was first determined to send up some human beings to the clouds in a Montgolfier, it was by no means an unnatural suggestion that the experiment should be tried upon a couple of criminals; but French valour would not permit even French rascality to carry off the honour of the exploit, and Pilâtre de Rozier indignantly protested that vile malefactors ought not to have 'the glory of being the first to rise in the air.' Brave men, however, whose courage could not be impeached even in the fieriest hour of battle, have been known to shrink from a balloon when they would have calmly faced a battery. A gallant field-marshal, says Flammarion, 'who had never hesitated to advance through the discharge of cannon and musketry,' declared more than once that he would not, for a whole empire, ascend even in a captive machine! On the other hand, it is related of an old woman (who had been an inmate of Lambeth workhouse for forty years, and who, on losing her son at the age of seventy-five, exclaimed, 'I felt sure I should never bring up that poor child!') that being asked on her hundredth birthday what treat she would like by way of celebrating the occasion, the ancient female decided upon an excursion in the great balloon then tethered at Chelsea. Her wish was granted, and she enjoyed a ride in the atmosphere at the foot of this huge floating gasometer, which was fettered to the earth by a cable of two thousand feet in length. The fair sex, indeed, have never exhibited much timidity in dealing with balloons. Out of the seven hundred persons carried up in the air at various times by the veteran Green, not less than one hundred and twenty were females. 'If,' hinted he to Fonvielle, 'you wish balloons to become popular in France, begin by taking women in them; men will be sure to follow!' Does not this accord to the letter with George Stephenson's dictum, that feminine influence would draw a man from the other side of the globe when nothing else would move him? Not that we think the advice was specially needed for France, for the first lady who made an ascent was a Frenchwoman, Mme. Thiblé; and the first lady who met her death on an aerial excursion was Mme. Blanchard, who belonged to the same nation.
First of all, then, we ought to see the balloon before it is inflated. There it lies, a vast expanse of varnished silk, or calico, or india-rubber cloth, enveloped in netting, and covering many a square yard of ground with its flabby, crumpled form. Nothing more lifeless and uninteresting can well be conceived than the huge shape which, in a short time, will lift itself by degrees from the soil, like a giant creeping gradually into consciousness, and then standing erect in all the pride of its newly-discovered powers, will expand into one of the most stately and picturesque machines ever invented by man. It is even possible to sympathise with M. Flammarion in his heroics when he imagines an aeronaut addressing it in language of mingled insult and adulation:—
"Inert and formless thing, that I can now trample under my feet, that I can tear with my hands, here stretched dead upon the ground—my perfect slave—I am about to give thee life, that thou mayest become my sovereign! In the height of my generosity I shall make thee even greater than myself! O vile and powerless thing! I shall abandon myself to thy majesty, O creature of my hands, and thou shalt carry my kingdom unto thine own element, which I have created for thee; thou shalt fly off to the regions of storms and tempests, and I shall be forced to follow thee! I shall become thy plaything; thou shalt do what thou wilt with me, and forget that I gave thee life!"
For many reasons, carburetted hydrogen, or coal gas, is the agent employed to give levity to the machine. In the earlier days of aerostation, hydrogen presented strong temptations. It is the lightest of the gases, being upwards of fourteen times rarer than atmospheric air, and therefore it was naturally regarded as the element best fitted to do man's bidding, and to drag him nearest to the stars. But hydrogen is an expensive article, and needs an elaborate apparatus for its production, whereas coal gas is burnt in every civilized street, and may be obtained in any quantity by connecting a flexible tube with the nearest tap. In the still darker ages of aeronautic science, it is well known that heated air was the element employed; and, going back into yet more benighted times, we find that Father Lana proposed to give buoyancy to copper globes by filling them, as an Hibernian once remarked, with a vacuum; whilst another worthy Père, Galien of Avignon, gravely suggested that balloons should be inflated with attenuated air, brought down from mountain tops in bags prepared for the purpose, in which case they would, of course, ascend to similar heights!
Let us now enter the car. The huge monster above us is swaying to and fro in the breeze, and struggling for freedom like some giant soul which has done its work on earth and is eager to reach its native skies. The cords which hold us captive are loosed, and, as if by instinct, we grasp the nearest rope, or hold fast to the wicker work, to secure ourselves from the effects of our sudden translation—we might almost say projection—through the air. But the first feeling is one of surprise. We find ourselves perfectly stationary, whilst, strange to say, the earth—the great solid globe on which we recently stood, with all its towers and temples, its gazing crowds and spreading landscapes—is seen shooting downwards in space with frightful velocity! Worse still, glancing upwards, the sky appears to be falling, as if the ceiling of the universe had given way; and yonder big dark cloud, which seemed to be motionless when we took our seat, is now tumbling headlong upon us, and will, infallibly, crush our balloon like a moth. It requires some little consideration to correct this delusion, and satisfy ourselves that here, as in many of the moral and social phenomena of life, the change is in us, and not in the world itself.
As we rise, the view below grows more expansive, but, at the same time, it appears to flatten. The hills are planed down, the valleys are filled up, and the rich undulations and inequalities which contribute so much to the picturesque are in a great measure lost to the aerial eye. We seem to be hovering over a huge, variegated ordnance map, tinted for the most part with green; its rivers looking like silver ribbons, its railways like ruled lines, its woods represented by patches of verdure, and its towns exhibiting grooves or gutters for streets, and kitchen areas for squares.
This effect is the more striking when we look perpendicularly down upon tall, slender objects like steeples, pillars, or elevated statues. The Monument of London becomes a mere gilded speck on the pavement. The hapless column in the Place Vendôme, now overthrown by the hands of Frenchmen themselves, was described by an aeronaut as a kind of 'pin stuck head downwards in a cushion.' A view of the statue of Napoleon, as seen from on high, is given by M. Flammarion, and presents a ludicrous picture, the figure being crushed into a sort of black amorphous lump, which would be utterly unintelligible were it not that the shadow exhibits something of the human form, and not inaptly suggests some strong reflections respecting the fallen fortunes of the imperial dynasty. In fact, the landscape seems to be flattened as if some great roller had passed over it, and ironed out all the prominences in order to reduce it to one vast plain.
This appearance may be qualified by another, which, however, is not visible to every voyager. Without going so far as to imagine that the earth will display any portion of its convexity, we certainly should not expect it to assume a concave aspect to the eye. Yet, for the same reason that the sky above us looks like a great vault, and that the clouds overhead slope down towards the horizon, if sufficiently extended, the landscape beneath us should appear to be similarly hollowed were it surveyed from a corresponding elevation. In some degree, and to some susceptible minds, this curious impression is realized in a balloon. The central parts of the expanse below seem to sink and assume a dish-like form, so that, as M. Flammarion observes, we float between two vast concavities, the blue dome of heaven resting upon the green and shallow but inverted dome of earth.
But can we witness all this without a sensation of giddiness? Is not our enjoyment of the scene marred by a strong disposition to vertigo, such as is natural to human heads when raised to perilous altitudes? This tendency, however, is far less prevalent than might be expected in the car of a balloon. Professor Jacobi, who could not look down from a lofty building without dizziness, made his first, perhaps his only ascent without experiencing the least swimming of the brain. The chief feeling of an aeronaut, according to M. Simonin, is one of elation; his sense of individuality becoming so triumphant that he glances down upon the poor wretched globe he has left grovelling in its sins and sorrows, with a species of pity which is probably very much akin to contempt! But this sentiment, according to M. Flammarion, may be combined with another of a much more equivocal description. 'I also felt,' says this gentleman, 'a vague desire to throw myself out of the balloon. Though feeling convinced that it would be certain death, I was under the influence of a mild temptation to allow myself to fall, and my death became, for the moment, a matter of indifference to me.' The lofty air with which this is written, and the supreme nonchalance displayed, are eminently characteristic of the soil, or rather of the sons of France. 'Let me live or let me die,' he seems to say; 'whether I float in these pure ethereal regions, victorious over all the evils of earth, or whether my body lies shattered on those rocks below, a mass of featureless pulp, is a question of no consequence to Camille Flammarion! He is perfectly content whether he figures as an aerial conqueror or as a poor, palpitating corpse!'