are classed together. Air-travelling may be as unproductive of
actual good to society as filling the belly with the east wind"
is to the body, while every one knows something of the extent to
which the discovery of Columbus has influenced the character, the
civilisation, the destinies, in short, of the human race. We are
speaking at present of the known and well-attested fact, that the
discovery of America and the discovery of the method of
traversing space by means of balloons--however they may differ in
respect of results to man--rank equally in this, that of all
other discoveries these two have attracted the greatest amount of
attention, and given, in their respective eras, the greatest
impulse to popular feeling. Let the reader recall the marks of
enthusiasm which the discovery of the islands on the east coast
of America excited in Andalusia, in Catalonia, in Aragon and
Castile--let him read the narrative of the honours paid by town
and village, not only to the hero of the enterprise, but even to
his commonest sailors, and then let him search the records of the
epoch for the degree of sensation produced by the discovery of
aeronautics in France, which stands in the same relationship to
this event as that in which Spain stands to the other. The
processions of Seville and Barcelona are the exact prototypes of
the fetes of Lyons and Paris. In France, in 1783, as in Spain
two centuries previously, the popular imagination was so greatly
excited by the deeds performed, that it began to believe in
possibilities of the most unlikely description. In Spain, the
conquestadores and their followers believed that in a few days
after they had landed on American soil, they would have gathered
as much gold and precious stones, as were then possessed by the
richest European Sovereigns. In France, each one following his
own notions, made out for himself special benefits to flow from