rt of King James IV of Scotland, 'took in hand to
fly with wings, and to that effect he caused make a pair of wings of
feathers, which being fastened upon him, he flew off the castle wall of
Stirling, but shortly he fell to the ground and brake his
thigh-bone'.[1] The poet Dunbar attacked him in a satirical poem, and
the reputation of a charlatan has stuck to him, but he deserves credit
for his courageous attempt. So does the Marquis de Bacqueville, who, in
1742, attached to his arms and legs planes of his own design, and
launched himself from an upper story of his house in Paris, in the
attempt to fly across the river Seine to the Tuileries, about two
hundred yards away. He glided some distance, and then fell on a
washerwoman's barge in the stream, breaking his leg in the fall. These
and other disastrous attempts might be defended in the words of Wilbur
Wright, written in 1901, while he was experimenting with his own
gliders. 'There are two ways', he says, 'of learning how to ride a
fractious horse: one is to get on him and learn by actual practice how
each motion and trick may be best met; the other is to sit on a fence
and watch the beast awhile, and then retire to the house and at leisure
figure out the best way of overcoming his jumps and kicks. The latter
system is the safest; but the former, on the whole, turns out the larger
proportion of good riders. It is very much the same in learning to ride
a flying machine; if you are looking for perfect safety you will do well
to sit on a fence and watch the birds; but if you really wish to learn
you must mount a machine and become acquainted with its tricks by actual
trial.'[2] This pronouncement, by the highest authority, may serve as an
apology for some of those whose attempts were reckoned madness or
quackery, and whose misfortunes, during many long centuries, are the
only material available for the history of human flight.

[Footnote 1: From the _History of Scotland_, by John Lesley, Bishop
of Ross, written about 1570.]

[Footnote 2: _Journal of the Western Society of Engineers_, vol. vi,
No. 6, December 1901.]

Two periods of modern European history are notable for a quickening of
human interest in the problem of aerial navigation. They are the age of
Louis XIV of France, and the age of the French Revolution. Both were
times of great progress in science, and of illimitable hopes; but the
earlier period, which in England witnessed the foundation of