hereafter--succeeded in eluding it. The storm broke around them
when they were 14,000 feet high, and at this altitude, noting
that there were diverse currents aloft, they managed to
manoeuvre their balloon higher or lower at will and to suit
their purpose, and by this stratagem drew away from the storm
centre. After six and a half hours their voyage ended, but not
until 150 miles had been covered.

It must be freely granted that prodigious progress had been
made in an art that as yet was little more than a year old; but
assuredly not enough to justify the absurdly inflated ideas
that the Continental public now began to indulge in. Men lost
their mental balance, allowing their imagination to run riot,
and speculation became extravagant in the extreme. There was
to be no limit henceforward to the attainment of fresh
knowledge, nor any bounds placed to where man might roam. The
universe was open to him: he might voyage if he willed to the
moon or elsewhere: Paris was to be the starting point for other
worlds: Heaven itself had been taken by storm.

Moderation had to be learned ere long by the discipline of more
than one stern lesson. Hitherto a marvellous--call it a
Providential--good fortune had attended the first aerial
travellers; and even when mishaps presently came to be reckoned
with, it may fairly be questioned whether so many lives were
sacrificed among those who sought to voyage through the sky as
were lost among such as first attempted to navigate the sea.

It is in such ventures as we are now regarding that fortune
seems readiest to favour the daring, and if I may digress