louds, which had
previously overhung us, began to envelop us on all sides, and
gradually to exclude the fading prospect from our sight. It is
scarcely possible to convey an adequate idea of the effect produced
by this apparently trivial occurrence. Unconscious of our own motion
from any direct impression upon our own feelings, the whole world
appeared to be in the act of receding from us in the dim vista of
infinite space; while the vapoury curtain seemed to congregate on all
sides and cover the retreating masses from our view. The trees and
buildings, the spectators and their crowded equipages, and finally,
the earth itself, at first distinctly seen, gradually became obscured
by the thickening mist, and growing whiter in their forms, and
fainter in their outlines, soon faded away 'like the baseless fabric
of a vision,' leaving us, to all appearance, stationary in the cloud
that still continued to involve us in its watery folds. To heighten
the interest and maintain the illusion of the scene, the shouts and
voices of the multitude whom we had left behind us, cheering the
ascent, continued to assail us, (long after the interposing clouds
had effectually concealed them from our eyes,) in accents which every
moment became fainter and fainter till they were finally lost in the
increasing distance.

"Through this dense body of vapour, which may be said to have
commenced at an altitude of about 1000 feet, we were borne upwards to
perhaps an equal distance, when the increasing light warned us of our
approach to its superior limits, and shortly after, the sun and we
rising together, a scene of splendour and magnificence suddenly burst
upon our view, which it would be vain to expect to render
intelligible by any mode of description within our power. Pursuing
the illusion, which the previous events had been so strongly
calculated to create, the impression upon our senses was that of
entering upon a new world to which we had hitherto been strangers,
and in which not a vestige could be perceived to remind us of that we
had left, except the last faint echo of the voices which still dimly
reached us, as if out of some interminable abyss into which they were
fast retreating.

"Above us not a single cloud appeared to disfigure the clear blue
sky, in which the sun on one side, and the moon