for greater purposes. It is a long time since any catastrophe has happened to a balloon made of the ordinary materials.

The greatest fault to be found with aërial voyagers is the dulness of the narratives which they put forth. One would expect from their strange experiences more lively and copious accounts; but whether it is that they are not gifted with too much observation themselves, or have less to observe than might be supposed, whether they are not imaginative or well informed enough, or the air is for the most part as barren of sights as the ocean, nothing can be more barren or brief than their narratives in general. All which the traveller tells us is, that he rose to a certain height, and went to a certain distance; that the spectacle around him was very imposing, or grand, or magnificent; that he saw Kensington Gardens distinctly, or the old London docks; that the trees looked like hedges; and that he alighted safely at such and such a place, where he was treated with great hospitality by Mr. Jenkins; after which, he and his balloon returned to town the same evening by a post-chaise. Truth is certainly not 'more wondrous than fiction" here. Ariosto's hippogriff and Mr. Southey's aërial boat are abundantly more entertaining.

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In the first navigations of this kind, allowance is to be made for the fluttered feelings of the voyagers, which, indeed, are a zest of themselves. And perhaps the same allowance is to be made now, especially as there is still a tendency in the parties to compliment one another upon their courage. The thing to be desired, however (besides going up in more picturesque and varied countries mountainous, in particular), is, that they would tell us all they feel or see, giving us the minutest details, scenery,

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sensation, experiment, disappointment, every thing. It is hard if the results would not be more interesting than at present. Why does not Lord Clanricarde favor us with an account? Or Captain Currie? It would be curious to see the characters of the different minds, and of the impressions made upon them. By and by, people would be going up to record their experiences; and being on the watch for observation, new appearances would be noticed. How should you feel, reader, up in the sky? What should you say or do? Do you think you should be inclined to be merry or grave? or timid or bold?—or neither? Should you think most of the third heaven, or of Piccadilly?

Horace is of opinion that the man who first went to sea must have had a heart triple-hooped with brass. What would he have said to the first aëronaut? He has anticipated without knowing it, in the same ode:

Cœlum ipsum petimus stultitiâ.

Our folly strives to reach the heav'ns themselves.

It is thought a fearful thing at sea to have only a plank between you and death; but you have a comparatively kindly element to fall into, something more substantial, and which gives you a chance. You can struggle with it, swim, cry out, get upon a piece of wood or a hen-coop. Being a swimmer myself, I never feel as if I should be lost in water, as long as I had only myself to attend to. But think of a plank's being between you and a distance of three miles and a half, — all sheer emptiness! Down you go, precipitate, chucked out; a dreg at once tragical and ridiculous; a fluttering bit of humanity, no securer than a lump of lead, no stronger than a feather. To be sure, there are instances of being saved; but who could think of them at the moment of ejaculation?

Should a time, however, arrive when balloons shall be equally safe and guidable, steerable against the wind, &c., (and who, in this age of science and steam-engines, shall say there will not?) it is very pleasant to fancy one's self keeping one's balloon, like a carriage, ordering it hither and thither, visiting one's friends over the house-tops, and "looking in," not at the street door, but at the drawingroom window, &c. The poet wishes that he could fly; so that when pleasure flagged in the East, he might

"Order his wings, and be off to the West."

This undoubtedly would be pleasanter; more convenient, and not so expensive. But he might have both; and wings, compared with a balloon, would be like horse-keeping, compared with a carriage. Beaux, instead of cantering beside barouches, would then flutter three miles high by the side of a car; and a hero in a novel would gloriously catch his mistress in his arms, if her balloon burst, and convey her safely to earth, as Mercury did Psyche. People would then be accused, not of running, but of flying after the girls; and we should see an air-lounger fifty feet above Regent Street, pursuing some maid-servant, or pretty milliner, in and out the chimneys.*

* "I have fully considered the project of these our modern Dædalists," says Addison, in the "Guardian," "and am resolved so far to discourage it, as to prevent any person from flying in my time. It would fill the world with innumerable immoralities, and give such occasions for intrigues, as people cannot meet with who have nothing but legs to carry them. You should have a couple of lovers making a midnight assignation upon the top of the monument, and see the cupola of St. Paul's covered with both sexes, like the outside of a pigeonhouse. Nothing would be more frequent than to see a beau flying in at a garret window, or a gallant giving chase to his mistress, like a hawk after a lark. There would be no walking in a shady wood without springing a covey of toasts. The poor husband could not dream what was doing over his head : if he were jealous, indeed, he might clip his wife's wings; . . . what con

But war! What a horrible thing to be shot in a balloon! To "fall gloriously" that way, in battle!

"There was mounting 'mong Graemes of the Netherby clan;

Forsters, Fenwicks, and Musgraves, they ‘rose,' and they ran."

Think of two armies, or navies rather, meeting over Salisbury Plain, and commencing their broadsides! What a tumbling forth of bodies and cocked hats; of mid-balloonmen, and admirals of the sky-blue! "Sky-scraper" would then indeed be a proper term for the top of a vessel; and "Pegasus," and "Bellerophon,” names to some purpose. But war must go out, as nations advance, whether they arrive at these altitudes or not. Peaceful railroads will supersede hostile inroads (as old Fuller would have said): nations will no more go to war, when they become such close neighbors and their interests are so bound up together, than Middlesex will fight with Surrey, or tradesmen with their employers.

ON THE TALKING OF NONSENSE.

HERE is no greater mistake in the world than the looking upon every sort of nonsense as want of sense. Nonsense, in the bad sense of the word, like certain suspicious ladies, is very fond of bestowing its own appellation, particularly upon what renders other persons agreeable.

cern would the father of a family be in all the time his daughter was upon the wing? Every heiress must have an old woman flying at her heels. In short, the whole air would be full of this kind of gibier, as the French call it." - ED.

But nonsense, in the good sense of the word, is a very sensible thing in its season; and is only confounded with the other by people of a shallow gravity, who cannot afford to joke.

These gentlemen live upon credit, and would not have it inquired into. They are perpetual beggars of the question. They are grave, not because they think, or feel the contrast of mirth, for then they would feel the mirth itself; but because gravity is their safest mode of behavior. They must keep their minds sitting still, because they are incapable of a motion that is not awkward. They are waxen images among the living,— the deception is undone, if the others stir, -or hollow vessels covered up, which may be taken for full ones, the collision of wit jars against them, and strikes out their hollowness.

In fact, the difference between nonsense not worth talking, and nonsense worth it, is simply this: the former is the result of a want of ideas, the latter of a superabundance of them. This is remarkably exemplified by Swift's "Polite Conversation," in which the dialogue, though intended to be a tissue of the greatest nonsense in request with shallow merriment, is in reality full of ideas, and many of them very humorous; but then they are all commonplace, and have been said so often, that the thing uppermost in your mind is the inability of the speakers to utter a sentence of their own; - they have no ideas at all. Many of the jokes and similes in that treatise are still the current coin of the shallow; though they are now pretty much confined to gossips of an inferior order, and the upper part of the lower classes.

On the other hand, the wildest rattling, as it is called, in which men of sense find entertainment, consists of nothing but a quick and original succession of ideas, — a