the animal for Mr. Briggs to mount the next time he wants a day’s hunting.
The sale being concluded, the crowd slowly oozed through the archway to the different ordinaries that had charms for them. We may fancy the “horsy” talk that went on afterwards—the old-world stories told, the jokes they roared at over their brandy-and-water. Nightfall would see them sauntering home in groups of two and three. Footpads are never heard of in that part of the country where the fair took place, but the true agriculturist is a cautious man, and always returns home early on such occasions.
Still the streams of country lads and lasses, all with merry faces and wonderful head-gear, wend their way from the outlying villages to the great attraction, the event of their year. Still the cracking that told of shots for nuts went on more energetically each hour, and the street-vendors became more importunate in offering you walnuts as the hours slipped on. And then dusk came over the pleased assemblage, and their happy, eager eyes were lighted up by the flaring lamps which the stalls and itinerant pedlars display at such fairs. The roysterers in the taverns grew more merry, songs suddenly became (as they will do towards evening) very full of chorus, and everyone, from the cattle-speculator to the beggar selling matches, seemed sorry the fair was so nearly over. Perhaps Sarah Ann will not see Mary Jane again till next year, and Stubbs drink no more beer with Lobbs for two or three seasons. It is but few pleasures our young rustics can enjoy, and we will not grudge them their annual fair. Any one who has ever gauged the bucolic mind in its lower manifestations knows how thick it is. Transient gleams from the world of reason and education make a precarious entry at such merry-makings as we have attempted to sketch, and perhaps it might prove no paradox to recommend the encouragement of fairs as about the only secular educational agent that tells upon the rustics. “Statutes” and “mops,” where lads and lasses stand with their backs to a wall to be hired, are utterly destructive of all moral and religious feelings amongst farm-servants. They cannot be too strongly condemned. But do not lot us drift away from “merry England,” and too hastily interdict May-poles and ginger-bread eating. A certain amount of harm is inseparable from all great gatherings of the scantily educated, but we are convinced that a noisy, crowded, English fair is fraught with far more good than evil to that difficult class to ameliorate—our farm-servants.
BALLOONING, PAST AND PRESENT.
The excitement which has prevailed in Paris for several months past on the subject of aerial navigation almost equals that raised by the successful experiments of the Montgolfiers in the latter days of Louis XVI. Then, as now, people exercised their imaginations in conceiving the marvellous results which would flow from the power of flying through the air. With provisions sufficient to last him fourteen days, a man might travel to the most distant part of the globe, without fatigue or danger; alighting where he felt disposed, and proceeding on his journey as soon as he had satisfied his curiosity or transacted his business, if he had any business to transact. The idea of making a machine capable of floating in the atmosphere is probably as old as the hills, and, for aught we know, the materials of which the topmost stories of the Tower of Babel were built may have been lifted to the clouds by some such contrivance. In the “Noctes Atticæ” of Aulus Gellius mention is made of a pigeon made of wood (unless ligno will bear some more suitable interpretation), which was filled with a subtle kind of air and floated in the atmosphere. Comic writers of old abound in allusions to methods of doing the same thing. Cyrano de Bergerac, for example, says he reached the moon by filling phials with dew, which he fastened to his body, and which, when heated by the sun, ascended upwards, carrying him with it. So far as we know for certain, the first man who actually made a balloon capable of raising him in the air was a Portuguese Jesuit named Gusmao. He was sent for to Lisbon by John V., and made an ascent from the terrace in the presence of the whole court; but his balloon struck against the cornice of the palace, and was so much torn that it came down immediately. The priests who were not Jesuits excited such an outcry against him, probably on religious grounds, that he was not allowed to renew the attempt. The discovery of hydrogen by Cavendish, and its great lightness as compared with air, suggested to a man named Cavallo, of London, that it might be used for aerial navigation, in 1782. He filled paper bags with it, but the gas escaped through the paper, and when he substituted bladders they were too heavy to be raised. In the following year the difficulty was overcome by two Frenchmen.
Stephen and Joseph Montgolfier were paper-makers at Annonay in France, and to these it occurred that by coating the inside of a linen bag with paper and filling it with heated air they would have a balloon, the specific gravity of which, with its contents, would be less than the atmosphere it displaced. To test the matter in a satisfactory way, they made a balloon thirty-five feet in diameter, of a capacity of about 22,000 cubic feet. A wooden framework was attached to the balloon, which was suspended from a pole thirty-five feet high. Below the opening a fire was lighted, and as soon as the hot air had inflated the balloon it rose to a height which was estimated to be not less than 6000 feet. On the announcement of this successful experiment reaching Paris, scientific men there thought they would eclipse the provincialists, and a M. Faujas de St. Fonds set on foot a subscription for the purpose, and the sum required was soon raised. A professor of experimental philosophy named Charles, and Robert, a mathematical instrument maker, were selected to make the apparatus. These made a balloon of varnished silk, twelve feet in diameter, with a capacity of 950 feet. A thousand pounds of iron-filings and five hundred pounds of sulphuric acid were used in producing the hydrogen to inflate this balloon, which was