the good news, but still more surprised at the terms in which it was conveyed; the little that Griffith had learned at school he had almost contrived to lose altogether in the eight or nine years that had elapsed since he had left it. He seemed to ignore the very existence of such contrivances as syntax and orthography; and I really had grave doubts as to whether he was competent to undertake even an official situation in S- House. These doubts were not immediately resolved. Members of parliament, secure in their seats, are not precisely so anxious to perform as they some times are ready to promise when their seats seem sliding from under them. It was very nearly two years before Griffith received any fruit from his electioneering labors, during which time he had been leading a life of lounging, do-nothing, dreamy semi-consciousness, occasionally varied by a suddenly-conceived and indignant remonstrance, hurled in foolscap at the head of the defalcating member for the county. During all this time fortune used him but scurvily: his mother's tenants at Midvale clamored for a reduction of rent; one decamped without payment of arrears; repairs were necessary, and had to be done and paid for. These drawbacks reduced the small income upon which they lived, and sensibly affected the outward man of the gentlemanly Griffith: he began to look seedy, and occasionally borrowed a few shillings of me when we casually met, which he forgot to pay. I must do him the credit to say that he never avoided me on account of these trifling debts, but with an innate frank hard-working master and a laborious profession | glorying in the certainty of at length obtaining in the heart of London. Seven years I served an official appointment. I was very glad to hear and wrought in acquiring the art and mystery, as my indentures termed it, of my trade. Seven times in the course of this period it was my pleasant privilege to visit Midvale, where some of my relations dwelt, and at each visit I renewed the intimacy with my old school-fellow, Griffith. He was qualifying himself for the life of a gentleman by leading one of idleness; and I envied him not a little his proficiency in the use of the angle and the gun, and the opportunity he occasionally enjoyed of following the hounds upon a borrowed horse. At my last visit, at the end of my term of apprenticeship, I felt rather hurt at the cold reception his mother gave me, and at the very haughty, off-hand bearing of Griffith himself; and I resolved to be as independent as he by giving him an opportunity of dropping the acquaintance if he chose. I understood, however, that both he and his mother were still feeding upon expectation, and that they hoped every thing from General -9 to whom application had been made on Griffith's behalf, as the son of an officer, and that they confidently expected a cadetship that would open up the road to promotion and fortune. The wished-for appointment did not arrive. Poor Griffith's father had died without leaving that reputation behind him which might have paved the way for his son's advancement, and the application was not complied with. This was a mortifying blow to the mother, whose pride it painfully crushed. Griffith, now of age, proposed that they should remove to London, where, living in the very source and centre of official appointments, they might bring their influence to bear upon any suitableness characteristic of his boyhood, continued his berth that might be vacant. They accordingly left Midvale and came to town, where they lived in complete retirement upon a very limited income. I met Griffith accidentally after he had been in London about a year. He shook me heartily by the hand, was in high spirits, and informed me that he had at length secured the prom-doctrinated into his function. ise of an appointment to a situation in SHouse, in case T, the sitting member, should be again returned for the county. His mother had three tenants, each with a vote, at her command; and he was going down to Midvale, as the election was shortly coming off, and would-upon the proceeds of which she had frugally bag a hundred votes, at least, he felt sure, before polling-day. I could not help thinking as he rattled away, that this was just the one thing he was fit for. With much of the air, gait, and manners of a gentleman, he combined a perfection in the details of fiddle-faddle and small talk rarely to be met with; and from having no independent opinion of his own upon any subject whatever, was so much the better qualified to secure the voices of those who had. He went down to Midvale, canvassed the whole district with astonishing success, and had the honor of dining with his patron, the triumphant candidate, at the conclusion of the poll. On his return to town, in the overflowir gs of his joy, he wrote a note to me expressive of his improved prospects, and friendship and his confidences. At length the happy day arrived. He received his appointment, bearing the remuneration of £200 a year, which he devoutly believed was to lead to something infinitely greater, and called on me on his way to the office where he was to be installed and in The grand object of her life-the settlement of her son-thus accomplished, the mother returned to Midvale, where she shortly after died, in the full conviction that Griffith was on the road to preferment and fortune. The little estate maintained herself and son-passed, at her death, into the hands of one of her brothers, none of whom took any further notice of Griffith, who had mortally offended them by his instrumentality in returning the old member for the county, whom it was their endeavor to unseat. There is a mystery connected with Griffith's tenure of office which I could never succeed in fathoming. He held it but for six months, when, probably not being competent to keep it, he sold it to an advertising applicant, who offered a douceur of £300 for such a berth. How the transfer was arranged I can not tell, not knowing the recondite formula in use upon these occasions. Suffice it to say that Griffith had his £300, paid his little debts, renewed his wardrobe and his expectations, and began to cast about for a new patron. He was now a gentleman about town, and exceedingly well he both looked and acted the character: he had prudence enough to do it upon an economical scale, and though living upon his capital, doled it out with a sparing hand. As long as his money lasted he did very well; but before the end of the third year the bloom of his gentility had worn off, and it was plain that he was painfully economizing the remnant of his funds. About this time I happened to remove to a different quarter of the metropolis, and lost sight of him for more than a year. One morning, expecting a letter of some importance, I waited for the postman before walking to business. What was my astonishment on responding personally to his convulsive "b'bang," to recognize under the goldbanded hat and red-collared coat of that peripatetic official the gentlemanly figure and features of my old schoolfellow Griffith Maclean! "What! Griff?" I exclaimed: "is it possible-can this be you?" 'Well,” said he, "I am inclined to think it is. You see, old fellow, a man must do something or starve. This is all I could get out of that shabby fellow T and I should not have got this had I not well worried him. He knows I have no longer a vote for the county. However, I shan't wear this livery long: there are good berths enough in the post-office. If they don't pretty soon give me something fit for a gentleman to do, I shall take myself off as soon as any thing better offers. But, by George? there is not much time allowed for talking: I must be off-farewell!" Soon after this meeting the fourpenny deliveries commenced; and these were before long followed by the establishment of the universal Penny-post. This was too much for Griffith. He swore he was walked off his legs; that people did nothing upon earth but write letters; that he was jaded to death by lugging them about; that he had no intention of walking into his coffin for the charge of one penny; and, finally, that he would have no more of it. Accordingly he made application for promotion on the strength of his recommendation, was refused as a matter of course, and vacated his post for the pleasure of a week's rest, which he declared was more than it was honestly worth. 66 By this time destiny had made me a housekeeper in merry Islington;" and poor Griff, now reduced to his shifts, waited on me one morning with a document to which he wanted my signature, the object of which was to get him into the police force. Though doubting his perseverance in any thing. I could not but comply with his desire, especially as many of my neighbors had done the same. The paper testified only as to character; and as Griff was sobriety itself, and as it would have required considerable ingenuity to fasten any vice upon him, I might have been hardly justified in refusing. I represented to him as I wrote my name, that should he be successful, he would really have an opportunity of rising by perseverance in good conduct to an apper grade. "Of course," said he, "that is my object; it would never do for a gentleman to sit down contented as a policeman. I intend to rise from the ranks, and I trust you will live to see me one day at the head of the force. He succeeded in his application; and not long after signing his paper I saw him indued with the long coat, oil-cape, and glazed hat of the brotherhood, marching off in Indian file for nightduty to his beat in the H- Road. Whether the night air disagreed with his stomach, or whether his previous duty as a postman had made him doubly drowsy, I can not say, but he was found by the inspector on going his rounds in a position too near the horizontal for the reg ulations of the force, and suspended, after repeated trangression, for sleeping upon a bench under a covered doorway while a robbery was going on in the neighborhood. He soon found that the profession was not at all adapted to his habits, and had not power enough over them to subdue them to his vocation. He lingered on for a few week under the suspicious eye of authority, and at length took the advice of the inspector, and withdrew from the force. He did not make his appearance before me as I expected, and I lost sight of him for a long while. What new shifts and contrivances he had recourse to-what various phases of poverty and deprivation he became acquainted with during the two years that he was absent from my sight, are secrets which no man can fathom. I was standing at the foot of Blackfriar's Bridge one morning waiting for a clear passage to cross the road, and began mechanically reading a printed board, offering to all the sons of Adam—whom, for the especial profit of the slopsellers, Heaven sends naked into the world-garments of the choicest broadcloth for next to nothing, and had just mastered the whole of the large-printed lie, when my eye fell full upon the bearer of the board, whose haggard but still gentlemanly face revealed to me the lineaments of my old friend Griff. He laughed in spite of his rags as our eyes met, and seized my proffered hand. "And what," said I, not daring to be silent, "do they pay you for this?" "Six shillings a week," said Griff," and that's better than nothing." "Six shillings and your board of course?" "Yes, this board" (tapping the placarded timber); "and a confounded heavy board it is. Sometimes when the wind takes it, though, I'm thinking it will fly away with me into the river, heavy as it is." "And do you stand here all day?" "No, not when it rains: the wet spoils the print, and we have orders to run under cover After one o'clock I walk about with it wherever I like, and stretch my legs a bit. There's no great hardship in it if the pay was better." I left my old playmate better resigned to his lowly lot than I thought to have found him. It was clear that he had at length found a function for which he was at least qualified; that he knew the fact; and that the knowledge imparted some small spice of satisfaction to his mind. I am happy to have to state that this was the deepest | gentleman-a grace and an air proclaiming to depth to which he has fallen. He has never the world that though in the profession, whatbeen a sandwich-I am sure indeed he would ever it may be called, which he has assumed, he never have borne it. With his heavy board is not of it, and vindicating the workmanship of mounted on a stout staff, he could imagine him- nature, who, whatever circumstances may have self, as no doubt he often did, a standard-bearer compelled him to become, cast him in the mould on the battle-field, determined to defend his colors of a gentleman. It is said that in London every with his last breath; and his tall, gentlemanly, man finds his level. Whether Griffith Maclean, and somewhat officer-like figure, might well sug- after all his vicissitudes, has found his, I do not gest the comparison to a casual spectator.. But pretend to say. Happily for him, he thinks that to encase his genteel proportions in a surtout of fortune has done her worst, and that he is bound papered planks, or hang a huge wooden extin- to rise on her revolving wheel as high at least as guisher over his shoulders labeled with colored he has fallen low. May the hope stick by him, stripes-it would never have done: it would have and give birth to energies productive of its real blotted out the gentleman, and therefore have ization! worn away the heart of one whose shapely gentility was all that was left to him. One might have thought, after all the vicissitudes he had passed through, that the soul of Griffith Maclean was dead to the voice of ambition. Not so, however. On the first establishment of the street-orderlies, that chord in his nature spontaneously vibrated once again. If he could only get an appointment it would be a rise in the social scale-leading by degrees-who can tell?-to the resumption of his original status, or even something beyond. . . . . . I hear a gentle knock, a modest, low-toned single dab, at the street-door as I am sitting down to supper on my return home after the fatigues of business. Betty is in no hurry to go to the door, as she is poaching a couple of eggs, and prides herself upon performing that delicate operation in irreproachable style. "Squilsh!" they go one after another into the saucepan-I hear it as plainly as though I were in the kitchen. Now the plates clatter; the tray is loading; and now the eggs are walking up stairs, steaming under Betty's face, when "dab" again—a thought, only a thought louder than before-at the street-door. The spirit of patience is outside; and now Betty runs with an apology for keeping him waiting. "Here's a man wants to speak to master; says he'll wait if you are engaged, sir; he aint in no hurry." "Show him in ;" and in walks Griff, again armed with a document a petition for employment as a street-orderly, with testimonials of good character, honesty, and all that. Of course I again append my signature, without any allusion to the police force. I wish him all success, and have a long talk over past fun and follies, and present hopes and future prospects, and the philosophy of poverty and the deceitfulness of wealth. We part at midnight, and Griff next day gets the desiderated appointment. | THE PLEASURES AND PERILS OF BALLOONING. IT would appear that, in almost every age, from time immemorial, there has been a strong feeling in certain ambitious mortals to ascend among the clouds. They have felt with Hecate"Oh what a dainty pleasure 'tis To sail in the air!" So many, besides those who have actually indulged in it, have felt desirous of tasting the "dainty pleasure" of a perilous flight, that we are compelled to believe that the attraction is not only much greater than the inducement held out would leave one to expect, but that it is far more extensive than generally supposed. Eccentric ambition, daring, vanity, and the love of excitement and novelty, have been quite as strong impulses as the love of science, and of making new discoveries in man's mastery over physical nature. Nevertheless, the latter feeling has, no doubt, been the main-stay, if not the forerunner and fa ther of these attempts, and has held it in public respect, notwithstanding the many follies that have been committed. To master the physical elements, has always been the great aim of man. He commenced with earth, his own natural, obvious, and immediate element, and he has succeeded to a prodigious extent, being able to do (so far as he knows) almost whatever he wills with the surface; and, though reminded every now and then by some terrible disaster that he is getting “out of bounds" has effected great conquests amidst the dark depths beneath the surface. Water and fire came next in requisition; and by the process of ages, man may fairly congratulate himself on the extraordinary extent, both in kind and degree, to which he has subjected them to his designs-designs which have become complicated and stupendous in the means by which they are carried out, and having commensurate results both of abstract knowledge and practical utility. But the element of air has hitherto been too subtle for all his pro It is raining hard while I write, and by the same token I know that at this precise moment Griff in his glazed hat, and short blouse, and ponderous mud-shoes, is clearing a channel for the diluted muck of C-street, city, and di-jects, and defied his attempts at conquest. That recting the black, oozy current by the shortest cut to the open grating connected with the common sewer. I am as sure as though I were superintending the operation, that he handles his peculiar instrument-a sort of hybrid between a hoe and a rake-with the grace and air of a element which permeates all earthly bodies, and without breathing which the animal machine can not continue its vital functions-into that grand natural reservoir of breath, there is every physical indication that it is not intended man should ascend as its lord. Traveling and voyaging man must be content with earth and ocean;-the sub- | into practice were the brothers Montgolfier. But lime highways of air, are, to all appearance, denied to his wanderings. Wild and daring as was the act, it is no less true that men's first attempts at a flight through the air were literally with wings. They conjectured that by elongating their arms with a broad mechanical covering, they could convert them into wings; and forgetting that birds possess air-cells, which they can inflate, that their bones are full of air instead of marrow, and, also, that they possess enormous strength of sinews expressly for this purpose, these desperate half-theorists have aunched themselves from towers and other high places, and floundered down to the demolition of their necks, or limbs, according to the obvious laws and penalties of nature. We do not allude to the Icarus of old, or any fabulous or remote aspirants, but to modern times. Wonderful as it may seem, there are some instances in which they escaped with only a few broken bones. Milton tells a story of this kind in his "History of Britain;" the flying man being a monk of Malmsbury, "in his youth." He lived to be impudent and jocose on the subject, and attributed his failure entirely to his having forgotten to wear a broad tail of feathers. In 1742 the Marquis de Bacqueville announced that he would fly with wings from the top of his own house on the Quai des Theatins to the garden of the Tuileries. He actually accomplished half the distance, when, being exhausted with his efforts, the wings no longer beat the air, and he came down into the Seine, and would have escaped unhurt, but that he fell against one of the floating machines of the Parisian laundresses, and thereby fractured his leg. But the most successful of all these instances of the extraordinary, however misapplied, force of human energies and daring, was that of a certain citizen of Bologna, in the thirteenth century, who actually managed, with some kind of wing contrivance, to fly from the mountain of Bologna to the River Reno, without injury. “Wonderful! admirable!” cried all the citizens of Bologna. "Stop a little!" said the officers of the Holy Inquisition; "this must be looked into." They sat in sacred conclave. If the man had been killed, said they, or even mutilated shockingly, our religious scruples would have been satisfied; but, as he has escaped unhurt, it is clear that he must be in league with the devil. The poor" successful" man was therefore condemned to be burnt alive; and the sentence of the Holy Catholic Church was carried into Christian execution. their theory was that of the "fire-balloon," or the formation of an artificial cloud, of smoke, by means of heat from a lighted brazier placed beneath an enormous bag, or balloon, and fed with fuel while up in the air. The Academy of Sciences immediately gave the invention every encouragement, and two gentlemen volunteered to risk an ascent in this alarming machine. The first of these was Pilâtre de Rosier, a gentleman of scientific attainments, who was to conduct the machine, and he was accompanied by the Marquis d'Arlandes, an officer in the Guards. They ascended in the presence of the Court of France, and all the scientific men in Paris. They had several narrow escapes of the whole machine taking fire, but eventually returned to the ground in safety. Both these courageous men came to untimely ends subsequently. Pilâtre de Rosier, admiring the success of the balloon afterward made by Professor Charles, and others, (viz., a balloon filled with hydrogen gas), conceived the idea of uniting the two systems, and accordingly ascended with a large balloon of that kind, having a small fire-balloon beneath it—the upper one to sustain the greater portion of the weight, the lower one to enable him to alter his specific gravity as occasion might require, and thus to avoid the usual expenditure of gas and ballast Right in theory-but he had forgotten one thing. Ascending too high, confident in his theory, the upper balloon became distended too much, and poured down a stream of hydrogen gas, in selfrelief, which reached the little furnace of the fireballoon, and the whole machine became presently one mass of flame. It was consumed in the air, as it descended, and with it of course, the unfortunate Pilâtre de Rosier. fate of the Marquis d'Arlandes, his companion in the first ascent ever made in a balloon, was hastened by one of those circumstances which display the curious anomalies in human nature;—he was broken for cowardice in the execution of his military duties, and is supposed to have committed suicide. The untimely If we consider the shape, structure, appurtenances, and capabilities of a ship of early ages, and one of the present time, we must be struck with admiration at the great improvement that has been made, and the advantages that have been obtained; but balloons are very nearly what they were from the fist, and are as much at the mercy of the wind for the direction they will take. Neither is ther at present any certain prospect of an alteration in this condition. Their so-called "voyage" is little more than "drifting," and can be no more, except by certain manœuvres which obtain precarious exceptions, such as rising to take the chance of different currents, or low That flying, however, could be effected by the assistance of some more elaborate sort of machinery, or with the aid of chemistry, was believed at an early period. Friar Bacon suggested it; so did Bishop Wilkins, and the Marquis of Worces-ering a long and weighty rope upon the earth ter; it was likewise projected by Fleyder, by the Jesuit Lana, and many other speculative men of ability. So far, however, as we can see, the first real discoverer of the balloon was Dr. Black, who, in 1767, proposed to inflate a large skin with hydrogen gas; and the first who brought theory (an ingenious invention of Mr. Green's, called the "guide rope"), to be trailed along the ground. If, however, man is ever to be a flying animal, and to travel in the air whither he listeth, it must be by other means than wings, balloons, paddlemachines, and aerial ships-several of which are now building in America, in Paris, and in London. We do not doubt the mechanical genius of inventors-but the motive power. We will offer a few remarks on these projects before we conclude. But let us, at all events, ascend into the sky! Taking balloons as they are, "for better, for worse," as Mr. Green would say-let us for once have a flight in the air. Feeling nothing of the ascending motion, the first impression that takes possession of you in " going up" in a balloon, is the quietude-the silence, that grows more and more entire. The restless heaving to and fro of the huge inflated sphere above your head (to say nothing of the noise of the crowd), the flapping of ropes, the rustling of silk, and the creaking of the basketwork of the car-all has ceased. There is a total cessation of all atmospheric resistance. You sit in a silence which becomes more perfect every second. After the bustle of many moving objects. you stare before you into blank air. We make no observations on other sensations—to wit, the very natural one of a certain increased pulse, at being so high up, with a chance of coming down so suddenly, if any little matter went wrong. As all this will differ with different individuals, according to their nervous systems and imaginations, we will leave each person to his own im pressions. The first thing you naturally expect is some extraordinary sensation in springing high up into the air, which takes away your breath for a time. But no such matter occurs. The extraordinary thing is, that you experience no sensation at all, so far as motion is concerned. So true is this, that on one occasion, when Mr. Green wished to rise a little above a dense crowd, in order to get out of the extreme heat and pressure that surrounded his balloon, those who held the ropes, misunderstanding his direction, let go entirely, and the balloon instantly rose, while the aeronaut remained calmly seated, wiping his forehead with a handkerchief, after the exertions he had undergone in preparing for the flight, and totally unconscious of what had happened. He declares that he only became aware of the circumstance, when, on reaching a considerable elevation (a few seconds are often quite enough for that), he heard the shouts of the multitude becoming faint-hesion-and then, holding on by the edge, we er and fainter, which caused him to start up, and look over the edge of the car. So much for what you first feel; and now what is the first thing you do? In this case every body is alike. We all do the same thing. We look over the side of the car. We do this very cautiously-keeping a firm seat, as though we clung to our seat by a certain attraction of co carefully protrude the peak of our traveling-cap, and then the tip of the nose, over the edge of the car, upon which we rest our mouth. Every thing below is seen in so new a form, so flat, compressed and simultaneously-so much too A similar unconsciousness of the time of their departure from earth has often happened to "passengers." A very amusing illustration of this is given in a letter published by Mr. Poole, the well-much-at-a-time-that the first look is hardly s known author, shortly after his ascent. "I do satisfactory as could be desired. But soon we not despise you," says he, "for talking about a thrust the chin fairly over the edge, and take a balloon going up, for it is an error which you good stare downward; and this repays us much share in common with some millions of our fel- better. Objects appear under very novel circumlow-creatures; and I, in the days of my ignorance, stances from this vertical position, and ascending thought with the rest of you. I know better now. retreat from them (though it is they that appear The fact is, we do not go up at all; but at about to sink and retreat from us.) They are stunted five minutes past six on the evening of Friday, and foreshortened, and rapidly flattened to a mapthe 14th of September, 1838-at about that time, like appearance; they get smaller and smaller, Vauxhall Gardens, with all the people in them, and clearer and clearer. "An idea," says Monck went down! What follows is excellent. "I Mason, "involuntarily seizes upon the mind, that can not have been deceived,” says he; "I speak the earth with all its inhabitants had, by some from the evidence of my senses, founded upon unaccountable effort of nature, been suddenly repetition of the fact. Upon each of the three or precipitated from its hold, and was in the act of four experimental trials of the powers of the bal- slipping away from beneath the aeronaut's feet loon to enable the people to glide away from us into the murky recesses of some unfathomable with safety to themselves-down they all went abyss below. Every thing, in fact, but himself, about thirty feet?-then, up they came again, seems to have been suddenly endowed with moand so on. There we sat quietly all the while, tion." Away goes the earth, with all its objects in our wicker buck-bas et, utterly unconscious-sinking lower and lower, and every thing beof motion; till, at lengtu, Mr. Green snapping a little iron, and thus letting loose the rope by which the earth was suspended to us-like Atropos, cutting the connection between us with a pair of shears down it went, with every thing on it; and your poor, paltry, little Dutch toy of a town, (your Great Metropolis, as you insolently call it), having been placed on casters for the occasion I am satisfied of that-was gently rolled away from under us."* coming less and less, but getting more and more "Crotchets in the Air, or an Un-scientific Account of a public edifices turned into "baby-houses, and Balloon Trif," by John Poole, Esq. Colburn, 1838. pepper-casters, and extinguishers, and chess-men |