virtually laid aside, and, to all appearance, might have continued
so, when, as if by chance concurrence of events, there arrived both the
hour and the man to restore it to the world, and to invest it with a new
practicability and importance. The coronation of George the Fourth
was at hand, and this became a befitting occasion for the rare genius
mentioned at the end of the last chapter, and now in his thirty-sixth
year, to put in practice a new method of balloon management and
inflation, the entire credit of which must be accorded to him alone.

From its very introduction and inception the gas balloon, an expensive
and fragile structure in itself, had proved at all times exceedingly
costly in actual use. Indeed, we find that at the date at which we have
now arrived the estimate for filling a balloon of 70,000 cubic feet--no
extraordinary capacity--with hydrogen gas was about L250. When, then,
to this great outlay was added the difficulty and delay of producing
a sufficient supply by what was at best a clumsy process, as also the
positive failure and consequent disappointment which not infrequently
ensued, it is easy to understand how through many years balloon ascents,
no longer a novelty, had begun to be regarded with distrust, and the
profession of a balloonist was doomed to become unremunerative. A
simpler and cheaper mode of inflation was not only a desideratum, but an
absolute necessity. The full truth of this may be gathered from the fact
that we find there were not seldom instances where two or three days of
continuous and anxious labour were expended in generating and passing
hydrogen into a balloon, through the fabric of which the subtle gas
would escape almost as fast as it was produced.

It was at this juncture, then, that Charles Green conceived the happy
idea of substituting for hydrogen gas the ordinary household gas, which
at this time was to be found ready to hand and in sufficient quantity in
all towns of any consequence; and by the day of the coronation all was
in readiness for a public exhibition of this method of inflation, which
was carried out with complete success, though not altogether without
unrehearsed and amusing incident, as must be told.

The day, July 18, was one of summer heat, and Green at the conclusion
of his preparations, fatigued with anxious labour and oppressed by the
crowding of the populace, took refuge within the car of his balloon,
which was by that time already inflated, and