Little by little, the belief widened that I was
not capable of what was laid to my charge.
At length, I was presented to a College-Living
in a sequestered place, and there I now pen my
Explanation. I pen it at my open window in
the summer-time; before me, lying the churchyard,
equal resting-place for sound hearts,
wounded hearts, and broken hearts. I pen it
for the relief of my own mind, not foreseeing
whether or no it will ever have a reader.

ON THE WING.

BELIEVING as I do in the probable origin of
the whole human species from a single pair, I
can fancy the first man, every time he witnessed
the flight of a bird, asking his wife, "My love,
why cannot we fly?" Angels or messengers—
beings associated with the earliest traditions—
are ideals of mankind flying. There is reason
to believe that during the whole period in which
the human family have been increasing from a
single pair to nine hundred millions, men have
been envying birds their powers of flight. "O
that I had the wings of a dove," was probably
far from being an original wish when uttered
by the poetical King David. Dr. Chalmers,
the pulpit orator, was enjoying, one summer
day, a sail in a row boat off the granite cliffs of
the coast of Buchan, Aberdeenshire. The blue
rock-doves were flying about the cliffs, the puffins
and cormorants were sitting upon the ledges,
and, after watching the birds for a time, the orator
exclaimed, "There, that cormorant is superior
to me. He is free of three elements; I, of only
one. Whilst I can only sit here, he has been
flying in the air, and diving in the sea, and now
he is again perched upon the rock."

The desire to fly in the air is probably as old
as the desire to float upon the water. The
aspiration has been preserved in the satire cast
upon it. During the whole existence of man,
Genius has been wishing to bestow the gift of
flying upon the human family, and foolishness
has been laughing at the wish.

Each fool still hath an itching to deride,
And fain would be upon the laughing side.

The fable of Dædalus and Icarus flying from
Crete on wings made of gummed feathers, with
the fate which befel Icarus when, soaring too
high, he melted the wax of his wings and
tumbled into the sea, is a satire by some representative
of stolid waggery against the impersonations
of manual and imitative art, which has
done service on the side of stupidity from the
most ancient times down to the present day.

But science' battles once begun,
Bequeath'd from failing sire to son,
If vanquish'd oft, are always won.

The laughing-stock of to-day is the pedestal of
to-morrow.

The coming generation will probably enjoy
the fruition of this aspiration of mankind.
Societies have for some years now been set up in
Paris and London to enable men to fly.
Materials, no doubt, exist in the British Museum
library and in the Imperial Library of Paris
for a history of the attempts made by mankind
to solve the problem of floating on the air; but
I can glance only at two points. In the last
half of the eighteenth century, the assumed
difficulty of breathing at great elevations was
deemed a proof of the impossibility of sailing
in air. An assumption of this kind may have
strength enough to keep back a beneficial
discovery or invention for centuries. This
mischievous guess was dispelled by the observations
of Lunardi, towards the end of the eighteenth
century. James Kay, whose caricatures
present striking portraits of the notabilities of
Edinburgh at this time, exhibited "a group of
aëronauts." He calls them "Fowls of a
Feather." The caricature ridiculed "a balloon
mania." James Tytler, a surgeon, chemist,
aëronaut, littérateur, and poet, with gifts which
brought him small profit, but which enabled him
greatly to benefit other people—the editor of
the second edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica
—after failing in two attempts, ascended
from Comely-gardens in a fire-balloon, stove and
all, to a height of three hundred and fifty feet.
The caricature represents Tytler, a slight keen-eyed
man, as if addressing to the tall and graceful
Lunardi, the central figure, the apostrophe:

Ethereal traveller, welcome from the skies,
Welcome to earth to feast our longing eyes.

The half-successful ascent of James Tytler
occurred in 1784, and in the following year
Vincent Lunardi frenzied the Scotch with
admiration by shooting up like a rocket to a
height of about three miles. The popularity
of this hero was so great that ladies wore
bonnets called lunardis; and the heroic
enthusiasm was inside as well as outside their
heads. Lunardi, in October, ascended in a
grand and magnificent manner, in presence of
some eighty thousand spectators, was wafted
by different currents of air over forty miles of
sea and ten of land, rose out of sight of sea
and land, through and above snow-clouds, and
when the barometer marked a pressure of
eighteen inches and five-tenths, felt no
difficulty in breathing. This fact, the refutation of
an obstructive assumption, was the contribution
of Vincent Lunardi to the science and art of
flying. The peasants and shepherds who heard
the trumpet of the descending aëronaut believed
the day of judgment was come; but clergymen
set the church bells ringing in his honour.
The belles of the Caledonian hunt deemed his
notice a distinction, and the wife of a laird
mounted alone in his car. The pluck of
Lunardi comes out in his reply to a gentleman who
assured him, just before ascending, that the wind
would assuredly blow him into the German
Ocean: "Me no mind that; somebody will pick
me up." And it happened that he was blown
out to sea six miles, and fished out half dead.

Mr. James Glaisher has, in our own day,
ascended twice as high as Signor Vincent
Lunardi. The scientific results which he has
obtained have not been negative, but positive.
He has proved the comparative worthlessness
of our wind-gauges, no doubt; but he has,