seen. The noise is as
inexplicable as the murmur in the air at hot summer noontide."

The significance of this last remark will be insisted on when the writer
has to tell his own experiences aloft over London, as also a note to
the effect that there were seen "large enclosed fields and gardens
and pleasure grounds where none were supposed to exist by ordinary
passengers." Another interesting note, having reference to a once
familiar feature on the river, now disappearing, related to the paddle
boats of those days, the steamers making a very beautiful effect,
"leaving two long wings of foam behind them similar to the train of a
table rocket." Highly suggestive, too, of the experiences of railway
travellers in the year 1847 is the account of the alighting, which, by
the way, was obviously of no very rude nature. "Every time," says the
writer, "the grapnel catches in the ground the balloon is pulled up
suddenly with a shock that would soon send anybody from his seat, a jerk
like that which occurs when fresh carriages are brought up to a railway
train." But the concluding paragraph in this rosy narrative affords
another and a very notable contrast to the story which that same writer
had occasion to put on record before that same year had passed.

"We counsel everybody to go up in a balloon... In spite of the apparent
frightful fragility of cane and network nothing can in reality be more
secure... The stories of pressure on the ears, intense cold, and the
danger of coming down are all fictions.... Indeed, we almost wanted
a few perils to give a little excitement to the trip, and have some
notion, if possible, of going up the next time at midnight with
fireworks in a thunderstorm, throwing away all the ballast, fastening
down the valve, and seeing where the wind will send us."

The fireworks, the thunderstorm, and the throwing away of ballast, all
came off on the 15th of the following October, when Albert Smith made
his second ascent, this time from Vauxhall Gardens, under the guidance
of Mr. Gypson, and accompanied by two fellow-passengers. Fireworks,
which were to be displayed when aloft, were suspended on a framework
forty feet below the car. Lightning was also playing around as they cast
off. The description which Albert Smith gives of London by night as seen
from an estimated elevation of 4,000 feet, should be compared with other
descriptions that will be given in these pages:--

"In the obscurity all traces of house