streets of Belgravia,--but were then a
dismal marshy flat intersected by black ditches, and notorious for
highway robbery, as a district dimly lit with an oil lamp here and
there, and protected by nothing but the useless old watchman in his box:
it is the tract of land between Grosvenor Place and Sloane Street. His
lordship had a reputation for parsimony, and he fancied it a bargain if
he could sell to my father those squalid fields for L2000,--so he
offered them to him at that price. When my mother heard of this, she was
dead against so extravagant an outlay for that desolate region; so much
dreaded by her whenever her aunt's black horses in the old family coach
ploughed their way through the slush (MacAdam had not then arisen to
give us granite roads) to call on an ancient relative, Mr. Hall, who
possessed a priceless cupboard of old Chelsea china, and lived near the
hospital. A tradition existed that the said family waggon had once been
"stopped" thereabouts by some vizored knight of the road, and this
memory confirmed my mother's disapproval of the purchase. So my father
was dissuaded, and declined the Earl's offer. I don't suppose that if he
had accepted it the property would long have been his, but must have
changed hands directly he had doubled his investment: otherwise, imagine
what a bargain was there!--However, nobody can foresee anything beyond
an inch or a minute, and so this other chance of "wealth beyond the
dreams of avarice" long ago faded away.

CHAPTER XLVII.

FLYING.

A lecture which I gave at the Royal Aquarium on September 28, 1883, on
the Art of Human Flight, attracted at the time a good deal of newspaper
notice; my friend Colonel Fred. Burnaby being in the chair, supported by
several other aeronautical notables. From a rough copy by me I have
thought fit to preserve the exordium here, just as spoken.

* * * * *

"'Tis sixty years since,"--as the title-page to Waverley has it,--'tis
sixty years since a little Charterhouse schoolboy of thirteen called on
one Saturday afternoon (his half-holiday) at a shabby office up a court
in Fleet Street, with a few saved-up shillings of pocket-money in his
hand. His object was secretly to bribe a balloon agent to give him a
seat in the basket on the next flight from Vauxhall: however as, either
from prudential humanity or commercial greed, the clerk stated that five
pounds was the fixed price for a place, and as the a