which can never be reduced to practice; and that of the numberless
projects that have flattered mankind with theoretical speciousness, few
have served any other purpose than to show the ingenuity of their
contrivers. A voyage to the moon, however romantick and absurd the
scheme may now appear, since the properties of air have been better
understood, seemed highly probable to many of the aspiring wits in the
last century, who began to dote upon their glossy plumes, and fluttered
with impatience for the hour of their departure:

--_Pereunt vestigia mille
Ante fugam, absentemque ferit gravis ungula campum._

Hills, vales and floods appear already crost;
And, ere he starts, a thousand steps are lost. POPE.

Among the fallacies which only experience can detect, there are some, of
which scarcely experience itself can destroy the influence; some which,
by a captivating show of indubitable certainty, are perpetually gaining
upon the human mind; and which, though every trial ends in
disappointment, obtain new credit as the sense of miscarriage wears
gradually away, persuade us to try again what we have tried already, and
expose us by the same failure to double vexation.

Of this tempting, this delusive kind, is the expectation of great
performances by confederated strength. The speculatist, when he has
carefully observed how much may be performed by a single hand,
calculates by a very easy operation the force of thousands, and goes on
accumulating power till resistance vanishes before it; then rejoices in
the success of his new scheme, and wonders at the folly or idleness of
former ages, who have lived in want of what might so readily be