uished by the talents of the commanders, as often happens in
more martial encounters. His competitor, Mr. Pitt, appears by no means
an adequate rival. Just like their fathers, Mr. Pitt has brilliant
language, Mr. Fox solid sense; and such luminous powers of displaying it
clearly, that mere eloquence is but a Bristol stone, when set by the
diamond Reason.

[Footnote 1: In the session of 1783 Fox, as the leader of the Coalition
Ministry in the House of Commons, brought in a Bill for the reform of
the government of India on the expiration of the existing Charter of the
Company. It was denounced by Pitt as having for its principal object the
perpetuation of the administration by the enormous patronage it would
place at the disposal of the Treasury; and, through the interposition of
the King, whose conduct on this occasion must be confessed to have been
wholly unconstitutional, it was defeated in the House of Lords. The King
on this dismissed the Ministry, and Pitt became Prime Minister.]

Do not wonder that we do not entirely attend to things of earth: Fashion
has ascended to a higher element. All our views are directed to the air.
_Balloons_ occupy senators, philosophers, ladies, everybody. France gave
us the _ton_; and, as yet, we have not come up to our model. Their
monarch is so struck with the heroism of two of his subjects who
adventured their persons in two of these new _floating batteries_, that
he has ordered statues of them, and contributed a vast sum towards their
marble immortality. All this may be very important: to me it looks
somewhat foolish. Very early in my life I remember this town at gaze on
a man who _flew down_ a rope from the top of St. Martin's steeple; now,
late in my day, people are staring at a voyage to the moon. The former
Icarus broke his neck at a subsequent flight: when a similar accident
happens to modern knights-errant, adieu to air-balloons.

_Apropos_, I doubt these new kites have put young Astley's nose out of
joint, who went to Paris lately under their Queen's protection,[1] and
expected to be Prime Minister, though he only ventured his neck by
dancing a minuet on three horses at full gallop, and really in that
attitude has as much grace as the Apollo Belvedere. When the arts are
brought to such perfection in Europe, who would go, like Sir Joseph
Banks, in search of islands in the Atlantic, where the natives in six
thousand years have not improved the science of carving fishing-hooks