ces; and
that so many of those who have perished in balloon voyages have done
so whilst serving to better end than the amusement of a holiday crowd.
There is, however, another aspect which makes at least the earlier
history of the balloon well worth preserving. This is the influence
which the invention had upon the generation which witnessed it. As
these pages show, the people of Europe seem to have been absolutely
intoxicated by the success of the Montgolfiers' discovery. There is
something bitterly suggestive in our knowledge of this fact. Whilst
pensions and honours and popular applause were being showered upon
the inventors of the balloon, Watt was labouring unnoticed at his
improvements of the steam-engine--a very prosaic affair compared with
the gilded globe which Montgolfier had caused to rise from earth amidst
the acclamations of a hundred thousand spectators, but one which had
before it a somewhat different history to that of the more startling
invention. England, when it remembers the story of the steam-engine,
has little need to grudge France the honour of discovering the balloon.
After all, however, Great Britain had its share in that discovery. The
early observations of Francis Bacon and Bishop Wilkins paved the way for
the later achievement, whilst it was our own Cavendish who discovered
that hydrogen gas was lighter than air; and Dr. Black of Edinburgh, who
first employed that gas to raise a globe in which it was contained from
the earth. The Scotch professor, we are told, thought that the discovery
which he made when he sent his little tissue-paper balloon from his
lecture-table to the ceiling of his classroom, was of no use except as
affording the means of making an interesting experiment. Possibly our
readers, after they have perused this volume, may think that Dr Black
was not after all so far wrong as people once imagined. Be this as it
may, however, in these pages is the history of the balloon, and of
the most memorable balloon voyages, and we comprehend the story to our
readers not the less cordially that it comes from the land where the
balloon had its birth.

London, January, 1870.

BALLOONS AND AIR JOURNEYS.

PART I. THE CONQUEST OF THE SKIES.--1783.

Chapter I. Introduction.

The title of our introduction to aeronautics may appear ambitious to
astronomers, and to those who know that the infinite space we call the
heavens is for ever inaccessible to travellers from the eart