s-Royal Garden! (1781-82. (Dulaure, viii. 423.)) The
flower-parterres shall be riven up; the Chestnut Avenues shall fall:
time-honoured boscages, under which the Opera Hamadryads were wont to
wander, not inexorable to men. Paris moans aloud. Philidor, from his
Cafe de la Regence, shall no longer look on greenness; the loungers and
losels of the world, where now shall they haunt? In vain is moaning. The
axe glitters; the sacred groves fall crashing,--for indeed Monseigneur
was short of money: the Opera Hamadryads fly with shrieks. Shriek not,
ye Opera Hamadryads; or not as those that have no comfort. He will
surround your Garden with new edifices and piazzas: though narrowed, it
shall be replanted; dizened with hydraulic jets, cannon which the sun
fires at noon; things bodily, things spiritual, such as man has not
imagined;--and in the Palais-Royal shall again, and more than ever, be
the Sorcerer's Sabbath and Satan-at-Home of our Planet.

What will not mortals attempt? From remote Annonay in the Vivarais, the
Brothers Montgolfier send up their paper-dome, filled with the smoke of
burnt wool. (5th June, 1783.) The Vivarais provincial assembly is to
be prorogued this same day: Vivarais Assembly-members applaud, and
the shouts of congregated men. Will victorious Analysis scale the very
Heavens, then?

Paris hears with eager wonder; Paris shall ere long see. From
Reveilion's Paper-warehouse there, in the Rue St. Antoine (a noted
Warehouse),--the new Montgolfier air-ship launches itself. Ducks and
poultry are borne skyward: but now shall men be borne. (October and
November, 1783.) Nay, Chemist Charles thinks of hydrogen and glazed
silk. Chemist Charles will himself ascend, from the Tuileries Garden;
Montgolfier solemnly cutting the cord. By Heaven, he also mounts, he and
another? Ten times ten thousand hearts go palpitating; all tongues are
mute with wonder and fear; till a shout, like the voice of seas, rolls
after him, on his wild way. He soars, he dwindles upwards; has become
a mere gleaming circlet,--like some Turgotine snuff-box, what we call
'Turgotine Platitude;' like some new daylight Moon! Finally he descends;
welcomed by the universe. Duchess Polignac, with a party, is in the Bois
de Boulogne, waiting; though it is drizzly winter; the 1st of December
1783. The whole chivalry of France, Duke de Chartres foremost, gallops
to receive him. (Lacretelle, 18me Siecle, iii. 258.)

Beautiful invention; mounting heavenward