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.