his project to Volta, and
in his dedication he does not scruple to say: "In our age, my friendship
seeks only one gratification, that we should both live a sufficiently
long time together to enable you to calculate and utilise the results
of this great machine, while I take the practical direction of it." The
following is this aeronaut's prospectus:--

"There is no limit to the sciences and the arts, which cultivation does
not overstep. We have everything to hope and to expect from time,
from chance, and from the genius of man. The difference which there
is between the canoe of the savage and the man-of-war of 124 guns is
perhaps as great as that of balloons as they now are and as they will
be in the course of a century. If you ask of an aeronaut why he cannot
command the motions of his balloon, he will ask of you in his turn why
the inventor of the canoe did not immediately afterwards construct a
man-of-war. It must be recollected that there have not yet elapsed forty
years since the discovery of the balloon, and that to perfect it would
be a work of difficulty, as much from the increased knowledge which such
a work would demand, as from the pecuniary sacrifices and the personal
devotion which it would involve.

"Thus this invention, after having at first electrified all savants
from the one end of the world to the other, has suffered the fate of all
discoveries--it was all at once arrested. Did not astronomy wait long
for Newton, and chemistry for Lavoisier, to raise them to something like
the splendour they now enjoy? Was not the magnet a long time a toy
in the hands of the Chinese, without giving birth to the idea of the
compass? The electric fluid was known in the time of Thales, but
how many ages did we wait for the discovery of galvanism? Yet these
sciences, which may be studied in silent retreats, were more likely to
yield fruit to the discoverer than aerostatics, which demand courage
and skill, and of which the experiments, which are always public, are
attended with great cost."

Robertson's proposed machine was to be 150 feet in diameter, and would
be capable of carrying 150,000 lbs. Every precaution was to be taken in
order to make the great structure perfect. It was to accommodate sixty
persons to be chosen by the academics, who should stay in it for several
months should rise to all possible elevations, pass through all
climates in all seasons, make scientific observations, &c. This balloon,
penetrating