LETTER IV


Andrew Pringle, Esq., Advocate, to the Rev. Charles Snodgrass--
LONDON.

My Dear Friend--We have at last reached London, after a stormy
passage of seven days. The accommodation in the smacks looks
extremely inviting in port, and in fine weather, I doubt not, is
comfortable, even at sea; but in February, and in such visitations
of the powers of the air as we have endured, a balloon must be a far
better vehicle than all the vessels that have been constructed for
passengers since the time of Noah. In the first place, the waves of
the atmosphere cannot be so dangerous as those of the ocean, being
but "thin air"; and I am sure they are not so disagreeable; then the
speed of the balloon is so much greater,--and it would puzzle
Professor Leslie to demonstrate that its motions are more unsteady;
besides, who ever heard of sea-sickness in a balloon? the
consideration of which alone would, to any reasonable person
actually suffering under the pains of that calamity, be deemed more
than an equivalent for all the little fractional difference of
danger between the two modes of travelling. I shall henceforth
regard it as a fine characteristic trait of our national prudence,
that, in their journies to France and Flanders, the Scottish witches
always went by air on broom-sticks and benweeds, instead of
venturing by water in sieves, like those of England. But the
English are under the influence of a maritime genius.

When we had got as far up the Thames as Gravesend, the wind and tide
came against us, so that the vessel was obliged to anchor, and I