to air-vessels, constructed more nearly upon the model of birds,
that we must go to find out the secret of aerial navigation. At
present, as in former times, we are at the mercy of
balloons--globes lighter than the air, and therefore the sport
and the prey of tempests and currents. And aeronauts, instead of
showing themselves now as the benefactors of mankind, exhibit
themselves mainly to gratify a frivolous curiosity, or to crown
with eclat a public fete.



Chapter II. Attempts in Ancient Times to Fly in the Air.

Before contemplating the sudden conquest of the aerial kingdom,
as accomplished and proclaimed at the end of the last century, it
is at once curious and instructive to cast a glance backward, and
to examine, by the glimmering of ancient traditions, the attempts
which have been made or imagined by man to enfranchise himself
from the attraction of the earth

The greater number of the arts and sciences can be traced along a
chronological ladder of great length: some, indeed, lose
themselves in the night of time." The accomplishment of raising
oneself in the air, however, had no actual professors in
antiquity, and the discovery of Montgolfier seems to have come
into the world, so to speak, spontaneously. By this it is to be
understood that, unlike Copernicus and Columbus, Montgolfier
could not read in history of any similar discovery, containing
the germ of his own feat. At least, we have no proof that the
ancient nations practiced the art of aerial navigation to any