h; but
it was not so considered by those who witnessed the ardent enthusiasm
evoked at the ascension of the first balloon. No discovery, in the
whole range of history, has elicited an equal degree of applause and
admiration--never has the genius of man won a triumph which at first
blush seemed more glorious. The mathematical and physical sciences
had in aeronautics achieved apparently their greatest honours, and
inaugurated a new era in the progress of knowledge. After having
subjected the earth to their power; after having made the waves of the
sea stoop in submission under the keels of their ships; after having
caught the lightning of heaven and made it subservient to the ordinary
purposes of life, the genius of man undertook to conquer the regions of
the air. Imagination, intoxicated with past successes, could descry no
limit to human power; the gates of the infinite seemed to be swinging
back before man's advancing step, and the last was believed to be the
greatest of his achievements.

In order to comprehend the frenzy of the enthusiasm which the first
aeronautic triumphs called forth, it is necessary to recall the
appearance of Montgolfier at Versailles, on the 19th of September, 1783,
before Louis XVI, or of the earliest aeronauts at the Tuileries. Paris
hailed the first of these men with the greatest acclaim, "and then, as
now," says a French writer, "the voice of Paris gave the cue to France,
and France to the world!" Nobles and artisans, scientific men and
badauds, great and small, were moved with one universal impulse. In the
streets the praises of the balloon were sung; in the libraries models
of it abounded; and in the salons the one universal topic was the great
"machine." In anticipation, the poet delighted himself with bird's-eye
views of the scenery of strange countries; the prisoner mused on what
might be a new way of escape; the physicist visited the laboratory in
which the lightning and the meteors were manufactured; the geometrician
beheld the plans of cities and the outlines of kingdoms; the general
discovered the position of the enemy or rained shells on the besieged
town; the police beheld a new mode in which to carry on the secret
service; Hope heralded a new conquest from the domain of nature, and the
historian registered a new chapter in the annals of human knowledge.

"Scientific discoveries in general," says Arago, "even those from
which men expect the most advantage, like those of the comp