cided upward turn. Thus we glide rapidly along pretty near the ground for several miles, and I am so successful in this delicate operation of keeping the balloon in equilibrium that, perhaps, at last one grows a trifle careless. The pilot line drags on a meadow below, and the friction gives the balloon a downward turn, which increases every instant as more of the line drags behind in the long grass. I instantly throw whatever small quantity of ballast is ready to hand at the moment, just to gain time, and my back having been now for some time turned in the direction of our course, I glance round to see that the country ahead is clear of obstacles in case we come to the ground. Horror! we are driving rapidly right on to a high tree. I can only allow myself one single halfsecond to make up one's mind whether to throw the grapnel, open the valve if necessary, and descend at once, or to throw out a quantity of ballast instead to lift her, and try to clear the tree. The former course would bring my trip to a premature conclusion, and if the grapnel should not hold very well I shall drive into the tree to a certainty. The latter is clearly the more sporting line to take, though somewhat hazardous. At all events it is the one selected. I seize a I seize a heavy bag of ballast with both hands, heave it up with all my strength, and throw it bodily over.

The balloon must have a few moments to turn upward, but while she is so doing we are driving rapidly on, and nearing the tree fast. The collision seems inevitable. But I reckon But I reckon that when once the balloon has fairly turned upward she will ascend very rapidly.

It is an exciting situation, for she does rise so fast that I am in doubt whether we shall not pull clear up to the very last moment. Her envelope and netting, as she lifts, brush close past the outermost twigs without catching in themonly a few seconds more and we should have cleared the tree splendidly. But now it is too late, for the car hangs too far below the balloon.

At the last moment, seeing the collision inevitable, I seize two opposite car lines, or connecting ropes between the car and the hoop above, pull them well in, that the others in front may shield my knuckles from the oncoming

boughs, hold on to them very tightly, crouch down at the bottom of the car, with my legs extended horizontally in front of me, and press my feet firmly against the forward side of the wicker car, to support it with the strength and momentum of my body. The next instant we are into the tree with a tremendous crash. It is a large elm, and we strike it, perhaps, fifteen or twenty feet from the top, right in the centre, and in a direction inclining upward. The next instant I find myself right in the middle of the tree, with the car dancing like a shuttlecock among the larger branches. Most fortunately the oval car is end on as regards the tree, so that its smaller and stronger section is presented to it. All the smaller outside boughs have been wrenched off or bent aside, and they have no doubt rendered most valuable service by checking our momentum gradually. I am still crouching low down in the car for protection, and holding on with all my strength to avoid being tossed out. On glancing up I am well pleased to see that nothing has given way. Every one of these slight-looking cords which suspend me from the hoop would hang me, and the car, and the ballast, and a barrow-load or two of bricks into the bargain, over a precipice with perfect safety. Not one of them has gone. On my side nothing goes, so it is pretty evident that the tree must go.

At every gust of wind the great balloon above tugs and struggles like a captive Leviathan longing to be free. There is a riving, a cracking, a smashing, and a rending, and bough after bough is wrenched aside or torn off. No matter how large and strong they seem, it is all

one.

The car ploughs its way steadily on, foot by foot forward and upward right through the tree. Soon we are free, and with an exulting bound the balloon soars upward once more. But stay-not so fast-there is a tremendous jerk, and, had I not fortunately been still holding on tightly to the friendly car-lines, I might have been shot between them right out of the car into empty space. The sudden check arises from the grapnel rope, which was hanging in a single long bight-fifty feet below the car.

The bight of the rope has caught over a large bough below, and pulled us up

with a round turn. The situation is a little awkward, for I seem to be hung up half way between heaven and earth. But before entertaining the question of cutting away the grapnel rope, we will see what the balloon herself can accomplish. She responds to the call, for she surges and tugs more valiantly than ever. Again there are sounds of cracking and rending below; one or two more strong jerks, as the rope, after breaking one large bough, catches on another, and we are really free once more. I glance aloft and around. We have positively no damage whatever, nor any token of the encounter, except one or two small boughs which we have carried away triumphantly sticking in the cordage above as trophies of our victory. It is clear from the last part of the adventure that it is a mistake where trees are concerned to have the grapnel rope hanging loose. So my first care is to make it up into a coil, which I lash alongside the car. The balloon is rising very rapidly, but I will let her go as high as she will, and even throw more ballast if necessary. For the present currents near the ground are taking us nearly straight for the sea, and I will try if haply there is a more favorable current up above. Moreover, the successful result of the encounter with the tree has inspired one with a spirit of adventure, and I want to see what sort of a world may be on the other side of the dark cloud masses above. Upward we rush accordingly, and soon enter the clouds. They are dense. am instantly shut in on every side, and cannot see the width of my balloon away in the thick masses of whirling vapor.

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We still rise rapidly, as is clear from the steady fall of the barometer, but the clouds are so thick that we are a long time in getting through them.

At last in a moment we seem to emerge, as if from a close and stifling pit of Avernus, into bright sunshine and the upper regions. We soar higher and higher as the hot sun expands the gas. Soon we have left every cloud far below us, and I find myself indeed in a new world.

II.

Alone in a balloon, far above the highest cloud, and how lonely who in the world below can tell? Doubtless

there is a loneliness on earth, as we wander in solitude in the wild and untenanted desert, on the lonely ocean shore, or in the mysterious gloom of some huge tropical forest. And there is a deep moral and spiritual loneliness in the strange and crowded city, where every one is hurrying on his own unregarding way; or in the fading daylight and oncoming darkness as we linger in some forsaken cemetery, where lie the remains of those who in life were dearer to us than life itself. But the desert has its tenants, be it only the slinking jackal below, or the soaring vulture above. The sea is always alive and replete with interest, with its innumerable ripples or its mighty waves in storm or calm. The forest is peopled, and full of sound and motion, be it of insect, or animal, or bird. The strange city abounds in human interest. Every new face is a study of a human life, and a record of a brother's experience. The solitary cemetery, with its sad monumental inscriptions, though it tells of separation, tells also of hope and renewal. It takes us back to the past and forward to the future. Even the dust beneath our feet is a link to bind us closer to our common humanity. Everywhere there is life or life's associations; everywhere ties and connecting cords to appeal to our own human life, and prevent us from feeling altogether alone. he knows little of the human heart who knows not the power of these things and how we cling to them. The familiar nibbling mouse, the accustomed spider, the regular bugle-call, the sentry's wellknown challenge, have saved many a poor prisoner in his lonely cell from madness and despair.

And

But here, in these eternal solitudes, there is no familiar form, no accustomed face, no sound, no voice, no life: only one vast untenanted abyss-only one deep unfathomable calm.

It is therefore, perhaps, no marvel. that the first effect of this intense loneliness is neither moral nor spiritual, but essentially_sensuous. The sensuous soul, the Psyche, sees herself suddenly stripped of all those innumerable external ties which had a powerful though unseen hold upon her everywhere below. The great gulfs which lie between her and them, and that dark, impenetrable

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cloud-curtain which everywhere shrouds them, seem to her quickened apprehension like long centuries, æons, of dreadful isolation and severance. She shivers, forlorn and naked, in the unknown void. For a while, indeed, she struggles and bears up. She is not prepared thus all at once without an effort to resign, together with all old associations, her hold upon the past, her volition in the present, her foresight and interest in the future.

All in vain. The situation is far too strong for her. For now, like deep draughts of intoxicating wine, the subtle but potent influence of this overpowering repose steals in at every pore. It thrills through every fibre of one's being. It rises higher and higher, wave on wave, like a mighty flood. It takes undisturbed possession. All is forgot ten. The great world below, so lately left, so manifold and rich in its myriad interests, has become an unregarded lump of pitiful dirt, which I may possibly have seen in some remote past; but I know not, and I care not, whether I shall ever see it again. Home, family, friends, affections hopes, ambitions, all fade away. They are as the memory of a vanishing dream. They are not. The Present, the entrancing Present, rules absolutely supreme.

I dare not move; it would be a desecration. Speech were profanity. The sound of my own voice, breaking in upon this awful silence, would jar upon the ear as harshly as would the loudboisterous song of some profane and drunken reveller disturbing the devout worshipper in the still and solemn aisle of a cathedral at midnight. It is with extreme reluctance that I force myself to make a slight necessary movement of one arm. The little creaking of the wicker car which this involves makes me shudder. The small sound is quickly gone, it is true. It goes out and returns not. It is instantly devoured-swallowed up and lost in the unfathomable gulfs which open out on every side. There is no cloud near to give back even the faintest murmur of an echo.

It is only, of course, at first that one's sensations seem so purely sensuous. Indeed the situation is not without moral and spiritual lessons of the highest order, and to these, let us hope, we are

not altogether blind or dead. Here there is nothing but the Almighty, and His greatest works. And we can, in some faint and far-off measure, understand how small in His sight must be the little rivalries, the narrow prejudices, the unworthy jealousies, the petty anxieties, the fashionable trivialities, which make up so much of our lives below. Here, far above it all, we feel as if, like Lear and Cordelia in their coveted prison, we could

take upon us the mystery of things As if we were God's spies.

His greatest works. Surely sun and sky and cloud are these. And here there is nothing else, and we see them in an unimagined perfection. The sun is no longer the sun which we know so well on earth. There he is perpetually half obscured, and even on the brightest summer's day he has to shine through innumerable varying layers of lower, moister, and denser atmosphere, which half quench his rays. But here he is a mighty burning orb, illuminating everything with one overpowering flood of glorious light. And such is the power of his rays that without a thermometer I should be quite unconscious of the circumstance that the temperature of the surrounding air has fallen twenty or thirty degrees since we left the earth.

It has grown

The sky, when on the ground, was quite obscured by clouds. As we ascended higher, and it came, here and there, into view, it was of the usual milky "sky-blue" tint. brighter and brighter, bluer and more blue as we rose; and now it is of an intensely deep Prussian blue color, like its hue at midnight on an exceptionally clear night. It is a glorious, shining firmament of deepest transparent sapphire. In the whole grand hemisphere there is not one solitary minutest speck to mar its absolute unity and perfection. For we have left far behind every trace of fog or mist or vapor, together with the whole apparatus for their manufacture. We gaze everywhere uninterruptedly into the transparent blue ether of illimitable space.

The clouds are all far below. Their first effect when we rose above them was that of a vast, lustrous, many-rippled lake of snow-white gossamer cirrus. A

little later, as we rose higher, and the larger masses below came more and more into view, in the wide intervals between the floating cirrus, they constituted a mighty ocean, with huge tumbling billows, and each billow seems huger and more wonderful than the last. But far away, toward the horizon, their giant forms melt gradually down and mingle with the cirrus, as the distance continually increases, until at last the vanishing point takes the form of a distinct and clear horizontal arc. This is as well defined all round the entire circumference as the ocean horizon at sea, and upon it I could take a sextant observation fully as well.

Besides these three grand elements of sun and sky and cloud, there is nothing, apparently, in the whole universe, but my tiny car and the soaring balloon above. Stay-far below, projected horizontally on a gigantic cloud, I see another and a far larger balloon, with car, aëronaut, ropes, every detail distinct and clear. It is the shadow of my own balloon, enormously elongated, half a mile long, or it may be ten miles; for I have no means of judging distances in this vast abyss wherein I float, an utterly insignificant speck, with no single known or fixed point anywhere, other than the sun overhead. These then make up the apparent sum total of things. A simple total. But all monotony in the picture is amply dispelled by the wonderful variations of form and color in the clouds themselves. From the lightest snowy flecks of floating cirrus, through all conceivable or inconceivable shapes of giant cumulus, down to dense impenetrable layers of solid stratus there they are. Their forms, their hues, and grouping are perpetually changing. Not rapidly; that would be out of harmony with the scene. But in a slow, silent manner, which seems to eliminate the idea of motion, and harmonizes well. And the great sun above pours down upon them all alike one tremendous flood of dazzling radiance, giving rise alternately to the brightest of lights or the deepest of shadows, according as they are exposed to or screened from his powerful rays.

At first it might well seem a wonder and a pity that no man has ever seen these magnificent clouds, and that no

human eye ever will see them but mine. To the artist and to every loving worshipper of Nature in her grandeur and her beauty they would be naught else than an education, and a supreme delight. Yet, doubtless, beings of another world, and with far better eyes than ours, behold their marvellous perfection, and rejoice. And, whether or no, let it abundantly suffice that the All-seeing eye of the great Creator is upon every one of them, and that His sovereign appro bation has forever stamped them Good.

as

But now it is high time to attend to the balloon and her path. On entering the clouds and losing sight of the earth, I had, knowing that our course might be nearly straight for the sea, fixed a time by my watch, beyond which, on a rough estimate, we must on no account remain lost in the clouds, otherwise, on descending, I might find myself over the water. That time has now expired, or nearly so. The balloon has been travelling at her own will. For a considerable time after rising above the clouds the expansion of the gas due to the powerful direct rays of the sun sustained her well. But of late she has been settling slowly downward. We are now between 6,000 and 7,000 feet from the ground. The clouds below are less dense than they were. Through rifts in their dark masses I begin to catch occasional fleeting glimpses of the earth. I lean over the edge of the car, and fancy that there is thus dimly to be discerned a long ill-defined line which might be the coast-line. A few moments later, and the truth is clear. There it is. The sea is below and most perilously close. We are driving right on to it. There is yet considerably more than a mile to fall. Shall I ever get down in time? or is it possible to stand on husband the ballast carefully, and cross over? One glance at the size of the balloon and the limited quantity of ballast available should suffice to dismiss the last idea as quite impracticable. But I cannot help toying with the thought for a few moments. The truth is, that I have drank so deeply of that intense repose which broods over all here like a presiding spirit, that I seize greedily on any excuse for putting off, just for a few moments longer, the inevitable time of en

ergetic action. But every moment is precious. We are driving steadily on at an unknown rate. So with an effort I rouse myself, and seize the valve-line. One, two, three, four, five, six-I count the time, holding the great valve on top of the balloon wide open. It would be sheer insanity, under any ordinary circumstances, thus to challenge my balloon to a headlong course downward. But I am now fully awake to the situation. A decided effort must be made, and any half measures would be foredoomed to disastrous failure. I calculate that the clouds below will tend to check the inevitable acceleration of speed in our downward course to a considerable extent. No doubt when we get through them 1 shall have to look out, for she will be likely to accelerate greatly; but there is sufficient ballast to enable me to put on a powerful brake to stop her down below. In any case it seems better to run any unknown risk, which the uncertainty as to stopping her involves, than to incur the absolute certainty of falling into the sea a little later

on.

Down we go accordingly. I employ the short time available before we reach the clouds in piling up the bags of ballast on the seat of the car ready to hand for instant dismissal, keeping an intermittent eye on the barometer all the time. When we enter the clouds the whistle and swish of the light vapor as we rush through warns me plainly that we are travelling, but although the barometer is running up rapidly, it does not seem to indicate any marked increase of speed. This gives me time to cut adrift the lashing which ties up the grapnel rope, and to shake out the coils till the falling rope hangs in a single bight below. The grapnel itself I hang by its tines over the side of the car, all ready to let go. The clouds are thick, and before we are through them everything is in readiness for a landing. Still rapid progress, but no very marked acceleration of speed.

Now we are through, and the earth bursts upon us all at once. The sea is still a considerable distance off, and I am inclined to think that all is well. One more glance at the barometer-we are, say, 3000 feet from the ground. throw out a few pieces of paper. If

I

they were to journey down alongside of us we should be falling rapidly, but at a reasonable rate. But now they rise sharply, and are soon left far above out of sight. Certainly we are travelling. I now watch the ground below steadily. We are over an open marsh. There are one or two solitary shepherds' cottages, and a few dykes full of water. These objects are apparently moving out from below to right or left. The rapidly increasing velocity of this, their angular movement of divergence from the vertical, together with the progressive enlargement in size of each field, or defined area below, gives some measure to the eye of the rapid rate of our progress downward, and greater nearness to the ground. I throw more paper. It runs up faster than before. Shall I ever pull her up? But the sea is advancing steadily in a swift silent manner, which is not reassuring. We are driving fast right on to it. There is plenty of room under us yet, and I will stand on a little longer. But I heave up a heavy bag of ballast with both hands, poise it on the edge of the car, and hold it ready to throw.

All at once it strikes me that she is accelerating frightfully. The cottage, which at first seemed at rest right underneath us, and then was creeping slowly out to the left, is now going off at full gallop like a runaway horse. The whole country immediately below has become an uncertain sort of moving phantasmagoria. We are 2000 feet from the ground, by eye, for I dare not lose sight of the earth to look at barometers. Sea or no sea, I must bring her to while yet there is room, or surely I shall be smashed to pieces. Over goes the ponderous mass of ballast, bag and all; and more follow as fast as I can seize and throw them. Over they go, till I have only one bag left. The heavy sacks of wet sand go down like thunderbolts. They ought, of course, to be emptied of their contents, which would then descend as usual in a harmless shower. Probably there is nothing but marsh, or only a few cattle, below. But were there flocks and herds innumerable, and a stray shepherd or two into the bargain, I should be sorry to assert very positively that they would not have one and all to take their chance of a bag.