84 THE WING. 



riess and freedom, dreams of becoming a bird, and taking unto him- 

 self wings?" 



It is in liis sunniest time, his first and richest existence, in his day- 

 dreams of youth, that man has sometimes the good fortune to forget 

 that he is a man, a slave to hard fate, and chained to earth. 

 Behold, yonder, him who flies abroad, who hovers, who dominates over 

 the world, who swims in the sunbeam; he enjoys the inefl^able felicity 

 of embracing at a glance an infinity of things which yesterday he 

 could only see one by one. Obscure enigma of detail, suddenly made 

 luminous to him who perceives its unity! To see the world beneath 

 one's self, to embrace, to love it! How divine, how lofty a dream! 

 Do not wake me, I pray you, never wake me! But what is this? 

 Here again are day, uproar, and labour; the harsh iron hammer, the 

 ear-piercing bell with its voice of steel, dethrone and dash me head- 

 long; my wings are rent. Dull earth, I fall to earth; bruised and 

 bent, I return to the plough. 



When, at the close of the last century, man formed the daring idea 

 of giving himself up to the winds, of mounting in the air without 

 rudder, or oar, or means of guidance, he proclaimed aloud that at 

 length he had secured his pinions, had eluded nature, and conquered 

 gravitation. Cruel and tragical catastrophes gave the lie to this 

 ambition. He studied the economy of the bird's wing, he undertook 

 to imitate it ; rudely enough he counterfeited its inimitable mechanism. 

 We saw with terror, from a column of a hundred feet high, a poor 

 human bird, armed with huge wings, dart into air, wrestle with it, 

 and dash headlong into atoms. 



The gloomy and fatal machine, in its laborious complexity, was a 

 sorry imitation of that admirable arm (far superior to the human 

 arm), that system of muscles, which co-operate among themselves in 

 so vigorous and lively a movement. Disjointed and relaxed, the 

 human wing lacked especially that all-powerful muscle which connects 

 the shoulder to the chest (the humerus to the sternum), and com- 

 municates its impetus to the thunderous flight of the falcon. The 

 instrument acts so directly on the mover, the oar on the rower, and 



