y, and all the
walks gloomy. There was a spectral attempt at rope-dancing in the little
open theatre. The sun shone upon the spangled dresses of the performers,
and their evolutions were about as inspiriting and appropriate as a
country-dance in a family vault. So we retraced our steps to the
firework-ground, and mingled with the little crowd of people who were
contemplating Mr. Green.

Some half-dozen men were restraining the impetuosity of one of the
balloons, which was completely filled, and had the car already attached;
and as rumours had gone abroad that a Lord was 'going up,' the crowd were
more than usually anxious and talkative. There was one little man in
faded black, with a dirty face and a rusty black neckerchief with a red
border, tied in a narrow wisp round his neck, who entered into
conversation with everybody, and had something to say upon every remark
that was made within his hearing. He was standing with his arms folded,
staring up at the balloon, and every now and then vented his feelings of
reverence for the aeronaut, by saying, as he looked round to catch
somebody's eye, 'He's a rum 'un is Green; think o' this here being
up'ards of his two hundredth ascent; ecod, the man as is ekal to Green
never had the toothache yet, nor won't have within this hundred year, and
that's all about it. When you meets with real talent, and native, too,
encourage it, that's what I say;' and when he had delivered himself to
this effect, he would fold his arms with more determination than ever,
and stare at the balloon with a sort of admiring defiance of any other
man alive, beyond himself and Green, that impressed the crowd with the
opinion that he was an oracle.

'Ah, you're very right, sir,' said another gentleman, with his wife, and
children, and mother, and wife's sister, and a host of female friends, in
all the gentility of white pocket-handkerchiefs, frills, and spencers,
'Mr. Green is a steady hand, sir, and there's no fear about him.'

'Fear!' said the little man: 'isn't it a lovely thing to see him and his
wife a going up in one balloon, and his own son and _his_ wife a jostling
up against them in another, and all of them going twenty or thirty mile
in three hours or so, and then coming back in pochayses? I don't know
where this here science is to stop, mind you; that's what bothers me.'

Here there was a considerable talking among the females in the spencers.

'What's the ladies a laughing at, sir?' i