of this order of modern
knights-errant, from hot-headed, ill-fated Pilatre de Rozier down to
Gaston Tissandier, the man who still edits _La Nature_ in the lower
strata of an ocean into the treacherous upper depths of which he has
risen seven miles. Your true aeronaut is not an inventor of
flying-machines, not much concerned about what is known as the "problem
of aerial navigation." He is content to take the wings of the morning
and be carried away to the uttermost parts of the earth. Problems he
leaves to the scientists: he wooes the wilderness he cannot subdue. He
is an explorer of unknown regions, a beauty-worshipper at a shrine whose
pearly, sun-kissed portals open to him alone. People travel thousands of
miles horizontally to rest their eyes on scenes infinitely less novel,
beautiful and grand than one perpendicular mile of vantage would open to
them, little matter whence taken.

Having accepted the wind for his pilot, our argonaut seeks no
improvement upon his aerial raft. Like the bow and arrow, it long ago
reached perfection, and, though he may cherish some choice and secret
recipe for varnish or be the inventor of an improved valve, he generally
builds with a birdlike reliance on instinct and tradition. Gas-bag,
netting, concentrating-ring, basket, valve, anchor, drag-rope and
exploding cord,--what has the century of ballooning added to its
essentials? how can coming centuries improve this perfection of
simplicity? Aerial navigation is altogether another thing. A swallow
does not rise by displacing a volume of air whose specific gravity is
greater than its own, but by using the atmosphere as a fulcrum.
Otherwise it must possess a bulk which its tiny wings would be powerless
to impel against the opposing breeze. Mr. Grimley, the aeronaut, writing
of some experiments he has recently been making at Montreal with an
ingenious arrangement of revolving fans invented by two gentlemen of
that city, says: "The Cowan and Paje propelling and steering apparatus
worked as well as could be expected, but the air will never be navigated
by balloons driven by machinery. It is opposed to common sense." Few
fully appreciate the extreme mobility of the atmosphere or the intensity
of the force which wind exerts on surfaces opposed to its action. A
child with a palm-leaf fan can drive a balloon in equilibrium about at
will in an atmosphere entirely quiet, while the same balloon, under the
impulse of a lively gale, will tear itself l