Remarks on Alrostation. — 329 
ininated the world with the most splendid discoveries, direct- 
ed and rectified by the severest logic of science, and who hint- 
self exhibits a vigorous and cultivated intellect, ought =e to 
es ee with a sneer. 
1 brilliant thin es may 
iss pes about them, with little oe and with as little merit. 
Horace, in a beautiful ode to the safety of his friend Virgil, 
abont to sail for Athens, inveighs against the temerity of that 
man, who first presumed to tempt the gods, by venturing to 
sea. What, (possessed of as much poetry and no more of phi« 
losophy,) would he have said, had he livedin our days, and 
could he have seen Capt. Hastings, or Lord Cochrane, dashing 
through the Mediteranean ima steam boat of war ;—a frail 
machine “agg of the most combustible materials -—urged 
iorward by a fierce internal heat, groaning like the fires of 
Etna, imprisoning a power more tremendous than the winds, 
but defying both winds and waves, and bearing along the 
thunders and the bolts of Jove! He ee hate cursed the 
audacious adventurers by all his gods ! Could he have seen 
balloons actually rising into the atmosphere, till they became 
inv isible—transporting the zeronauts ‘* swift as the winds a- 
long,” or anchored aloft for months, and used by a corps of zro- 
nautic engineers,* and then descending in safety to the earth, 
he would have thought them little less than the gods, and 
would probably have changed his eurse into an ode of deifi- 
ion. 
Ifscience then has often achieved what would have been 
thought incredible, let not her efforts be stinted for want of 
ns" which an opulent country can easily supply. 
There is a ifference between att empting that w which Is 
absurd, and that which is only very difficult. - stual mot 
is an absurdity, but it involves no absurdity to attempt to rise” 
into the atmosphere, or to attempt to steer our way when we 
The latter is confessedly very difficult, 
t, th di ficult is enhanced ih a pp nden 
a : f area es z The thousands whieh, 
* As was done in France during the rev volution, w' af oer regular school 
nder a Colonel of that department, was ¢ ished, for warlike 
purposes ; ‘a certain number of pupils being daily fina aloft i in the at- 
mosphere. 
VOL. XH.—NO- 2. 42 
a 
