ass and the
steam-engine, were greeted at first with contempt, or at the best with
indifference. Political events, and the fortunes of armies monopolised
almost entirely the attention of the people. But to this rule there
are two exceptions--the discoveries of America and of aerostatics, the
advents of Columbus and of Montgolfier." It is not here our duty
to inquire how it happened that the discoveries made by these two
personages are classed together. Air-travelling may be as unproductive
of actual good to society as filling the belly with the "east wind" is
to the body, while every one knows something of the extent to which the
discovery of Columbus has influenced the character, the civilisation,
the destinies, in short, of the human race. We are speaking at present
of the known and well-attested fact, that the discovery of America
and the discovery of the method of traversing space by means of
balloons--however they may differ in respect of results to man--rank
equally in this, that of all other discoveries these two have attracted
the greatest amount of attention, and given, in their respective eras,
the greatest impulse to popular feeling. Let the reader recall the marks
of enthusiasm which the discovery of the islands on the east coast of
America excited in Andalusia, in Catalonia, in Aragon and Castile--let
him read the narrative of the honours paid by town and village, not only
to the hero of the enterprise, but even to his commonest sailors, and
then let him search the records of the epoch for the degree of sensation
produced by the discovery of aeronautics in France, which stands in the
same relationship to this event as that in which Spain stands to the
other. The processions of Seville and Barcelona are the exact prototypes
of the fetes of Lyons and Paris. In France, in 1783, as in Spain two
centuries previously, the popular imagination was so greatly excited by
the deeds performed, that it began to believe in possibilities of
the most unlikely description. In Spain, the conquestadores and their
followers believed that in a few days after they had landed on American
soil, they would have gathered as much gold and precious stones, as were
then possessed by the richest European Sovereigns. In France, each one
following his own notions, made out for himself special benefits to flow
from the discovery of balloons. Every discovery then appeared to be only
the precursor of other and greater discoveries, and nothing