the discovery of the balloon than any incident or illustration
drawn from the annals of a foreign country.

The work which we now introduce to our readers does not
exaggerate the case when it declares that no discovery of modern
times has aroused so large an amount of enthusiasm, has excited
so many hopes, has appeared to the human race to open up so many
vistas of enterprise and research, as that for which we are
mainly indebted to the Brothers Montgolfier. The discovery or
the invention of the balloon, however, was one of those efforts
of genius and enterprise which have no infancy. It had reached
its full growth when it burst upon the world, and the ninety
years which have since elapsed have witnessed no development of
the original idea. The balloon of to-day--the balloon in which
Coxwell and Glaisher have made their perilous trips into the
remote regions of the air--is in almost every respect the same as
the balloon with which "the physician Charles," following in the
footsteps of the Montgolfiers, astonished Paris in 1783. There
are few more tantalising stories in the annals of invention than
this. So much had been accomplished when Roziers made his first
aerial voyage above the astonished capital of France that all the
rest seemed easy. The new highway appeared to have been thrown
open to the world, and the dullest imagination saw the air
thronged with colossal chariots, bearing travellers in perfect
safety, and with more than the speed of the eagle, from city to
city, from country to country, reckless of all the obstacles--the
seas, and rivers, and mountains--which Nature might have placed
in the path of the wayfarer. But from that moment to the present
the prospect which was thus opened up has remained a vision and
nothing more. There are--as those who visited the Crystal Palace