P.
[Editor's Drawer.]
Perhaps no two of the "Mysteries of Science," as they are sometimes called, excite more interest among all classes of curiosity-mongers, than the Balloon and the Diving-bell. They are the very antipodes of each other, and yet the interest felt in each partakes of a very kindred character. To descend to the bottom of the sea, "where never plummet sounded;" to sink quietly and solemnly down into the chambers of the Great Deep; to see the "sea-fan" wave its delicate wings, and the coral groves, inhabited by the beautiful mer-men and maidens, who take their pastime therein; to gloat over rich argosies, the treasures of gold and silver, that brighten the caverns of the deep; to watch the deep, deep green waves of softened light that come shimmering and trembling down the dense watery walls—these make up much of the Poetry of the Diving-bell, of which all imaginative people are enamored, and which is not without a certain influence upon all sorts and conditions of men.
On the other hand, to rise suddenly above the earth; to look down upon the gradually lessening crowds and vanishing cities beneath; to glance over the tops of mountains upon the vast inland plains, sprinkled with villages and towns; to sail on and on, exhausting horizon after horizon; to look down upon even the clouds of heaven, and thunder-storms and rainbows rolling and flashing beneath your feet, and upon glimpses of the heaving bosom of the "Great and wide Sea"—these, again, are the elements of the aeronaut, that may well be termed the "Poetry of Ballooning."
But leaving the "Poetry of the Diving-bell" for another "Drawer," let us narrate an incident which we find in one of its compartments, or, rather, the synopsis of an incident, reduced from a more voluminous account, given at the time by a London writer of rare and varied accomplishments. It may, indeed, be termed, from the scanty materials preserved from the original record, a "Memory of Ballooning."
Mr. Green, the great London aeronaut, who has ascended some hundred and fifty times from Vauxhall Gardens, London; who has taken his air-journeys at all times of the day and night; who has sailed over a continent with passengers in his frail bark, when it was so dark, that, according to the testimony of one of his fellow-voyagers, it seemed as though the balloon was making its noiseless way through a mass of impenetrable black marble—this same Mr. Green—to come back from our long sentence—once gave out, by hand-bills and the public prints, that on a certain afternoon in July, he would ascend from Vauxhall Gardens, London, at four o'clock in the afternoon, with a distinguished lady and gentleman, who had volunteered to accompany him on that occasion.
The day and the hour at length arrived. The spacious inclosures of the Garden were crowded with an excited multitude, awaiting with the utmost impatience for the tossing, rolling globe to mount up and be lost in the blue creation that spread out far above the giant city, pavilioned by its clouds of smoke. But the hour passed by, and the "distinguished lady and gentleman" came not.
"It's an 'oax!" exclaimed hundreds, simultaneously among the crowd: "There isn't no sich persons."
Mr. Green assured them of his good faith; read the letter that he had received from "the parties," and his answer: but still the "madness of the people" increased, and still the "distinguished lady and gentleman" came not. Matters were growing more and more serious, and a "row" seemed inevitable.