e remarkable, if somewhat pathetic
subsequent career of the brilliant, intrepid Lunardi.

Compelling everywhere unbounded admiration he readily secured the means
necessary for carrying out further exploits wherever he desired while
at the same time he met with a measure of good fortune in freedom from
misadventure such as has generally been denied to less bold adventurers.
Within a few months of the time when we left him, the popular hero and
happy recipient of civic and royal favours, we find him in Scotland
attempting feats which a knowledge of practical difficulties bids us
regard as extraordinary.

To begin with, nothing appears more remarkable than the ease,
expedition, and certainty with which in days when necessary facilities
must have been far harder to come by than now, he could always fill his
balloon by the usually tedious and troublesome mode attending hydrogen
inflation. We see him at his first Scottish ascent, completing the
operation in little more than two hours. It is the same later at
Glasgow, where, commencing with only a portion of his apparatus, he
finds the inflation actually to proceed too rapidly for his purpose,
and has to hold the powers at his command strongly in check. Later, in
December weather, having still further improved his apparatus, he makes
his balloon support itself after the inflation of only ten minutes.
Then, as if assured of impunity, he treats recognised risks with a
species of contempt. At Kelso he hails almost with joy the fact that
the wind must carry him rapidly towards the sea, which in the end he
narrowly escapes. At Glasgow the chances of safe landing are still
more against him, yet he has no hesitation in starting, and at last the
catastrophe he seemed to court actually overtook him, and he plumped
into the sea near Berwick, where no sail was even in sight, and a
winter's night coming on. From this predicament he was rescued by a
special providence which once before had not deserted him, when in a
tumult of violent and contrary currents, and at a great height to boot,
his gallery was almost completely carried away, and he had to cling on
to the hoop desperately with both hands.

Then we lose sight of the dauntless, light-hearted Italian for
one-and-twenty years, when in the Gentleman's Magazine of July 31,
1806, appears the brief line, "Died in the convent of Barbadinas, of a
decline, Mr. Vincent Lunardi, the celebrated aeronaut."

Garnerin, of whom mention has alre