d as shadows to the gigantic picture." Arban was
at one time on a level with the highest point of Mont Blanc, the top of
which, standing out well above the clouds, resembled "an immense block
of crystal sparkling with a thousand fires."

In London, in the year of the Great Exhibition, and while the building
was still standing in Hyde Park, there occurred a balloon incident small
in itself, but sufficient to cause much sensation at the crowded spot
where it took place. The ascent was made from the Hippodrome by Mr. and
Mrs. Graham in very boisterous weather, and, on being liberated, the
balloon seems to have fouled a mast, suffering a considerable rent.
After this the aeronauts succeeded in clearing the trees in Kensington
Gardens, and in descending fairly in the Park, but, still at the mercy
of the winds, they were carried on to the roof of a house in Arlington
Street, and thence on to another in Park Place, where, becoming lodged
against a stack of chimneys, they were eventually rescued by the police
without any material damage having been done.

But this same summer saw the return to England of Henry Coxwell, and
for some years the story of the conquest of the air is best told by
following his stirring career, and his own comments on aeronautical
events of this date. We find him shortly setting about carrying out some
reconnoitring and signalling experiments, designed to be of use in time
of war. This was an old idea of his, and one which had, of course, been
long entertained by others, having, indeed, been put to some practical
test in time of warfare. It will be well to make note of what attention
the matter had already received, and of what progress had been made both
in theory and practice.

We have already made some mention in Chapter IV. of the use which the
French had made of balloons in their military operations at the end of
the eighteenth and beginning of nineteenth the century. It was, indeed,
within the first ten years after the first invention of the balloon
that, under the superintendence of the savants of the French Academy, a
practical school of aeronautics was established at Meudon. The names
of Guyton, De Morveau (a distinguished French chemist), and Colonel
Coutelle are chiefly associated with the movement, and under them some
fifty students received necessary training. The practising balloon had a
capacity of 17,000 cubic feet, and was inflated with pure hydrogen, made
by what was then a new proc