e going to try
that horrid horse in harness, and in a newly-invented high phaeton of
your own, and that the grooms say they would not drive that horse in
any carriage, nor any horse in that carriage, and that you have a double
chance of breaking your neck. I have disregarded all other feelings to
entreat you to give up your intention.'

Lord Curryfin assured her that he felt too confident in his power over
horses, and in the safety of his new invention, to admit the possibility
of danger: but that it was a very small sacrifice to her to restrict
himself to tame horses and low carriages, or to abstinence from all
horses and carriages, if she desired it.

'And from sailing-boats,' she added.

'And from sailing-boats,' he answered.

'And from balloons,' she said.

'And from balloons,' he answered. 'But what made you think of balloons?'

'Because,' she said, 'they are dangerous, and you are inquiring and
adventurous.'

[Illustration: And from balloons 162-130]

'To tell you the truth,' he said, 'I have been up in a balloon. I
thought it the most disarming excursion I ever made. I have thought of
going up again. I have invented a valve------'

'O heavens!' she exclaimed. 'But I have your promise touching horses,
and carriages, and sails, and balloons.'

'You have,' he said. 'It shall be strictly adhered to.'

She rose to return to the house. But this time he would not part with
her, and they returned together.

Thus prohibited by an authority to which he yielded implicit obedience
from trying further experiments at the risk of his neck, he restricted
his inventive faculty to safer channels, and determined that the
structure he was superintending should reproduce, as far as possible,
all the peculiarities of the Athenian Theatre. Amongst other things,
he studied attentively the subject of the _echeia,_ or sonorous vases,
which, in that vast theatre, propagated and clarified sound; and though
in its smaller representative they were not needed, he thought it still
possible that they might produce an agreeable effect But with all the
assistance of the Reverend Doctor Opimian, he found it difficult
to arrive at a clear idea of their construction, or even of their
principle; for the statement of Vitruvius, that they gave an accordant
resonance in the fourth, the fifth, and the octave, seemed incompatible
with the idea of changes of key, and not easily reconcilable with the
doctrine of Harmonics. At last he made up h