very difficult to fly downwards from moderate elevations. But, as he
was reproached by my sister for never flying back again,--which,
however, was a far different thing, and not even attempted by the
philosopher in "Rasselas,"--(for

"Revocare gradum, et _superas_ evadere ad auras
Hic labor, hoc opus est,")

he refused, under such poor encouragement, to try his winged parachutes
any more, either "aloft or alow," till he had thoroughly studied Bishop
Wilkins [3] on the art of translating right reverend gentlemen to the
moon; and, in the mean time, he resumed his general lectures on physics.
From these, however, he was speedily driven, or one might say shelled
out, by a concerted assault of my sister Mary's. He had been in the habit
of lowering the pitch of his lectures with ostentatious condescension to
the presumed level of our poor understandings. This superciliousness
annoyed my sister; and accordingly, with the help of two young female
visitors, and my next younger brother,--in subsequent times a little
middy on board many a ship of H. M., and the most predestined rebel upon
earth against all assumptions, small or great, of superiority,--she
arranged a mutiny, that had the unexpected effect of suddenly
extinguishing the lectures forever. He had happened to say, what was no
unusual thing with him, that he flattered himself he had made the point
under discussion tolerably clear; "clear," he added, bowing round the
half circle of us, the audience, "to the meanest of capacities;" and then
he repeated, sonorously, "clear to the most excruciatingly mean of
capacities." Upon which, a voice, a female voice,--but whose voice, in
the tumult that followed, I did not distinguish,--retorted, "No, you
haven't; it's as dark as sin; "and then, without a moment's interval, a
second voice exclaimed, "Dark as night;" then came my young brother's