INTRODUCTION. 5 



of this kind, which was a brief taste of the sweets 

 of liberty. 



Perhaps the spice of danger added to the enjoy- 

 ment of the trespass. For there have been instances 

 where spiteful creditors, baffled by the debtor's refuge 

 in the Rules, have placed cunning officers within 

 hiding, and so have captured their unfortunate debtors, 

 and deprived them even of the small modicum of 

 liberty which they had been permitted to enjoy. 



Even where man is not a prisoner in this sense of 

 the word, he feels himself a prisoner in many others, 

 and is always trying to pass the boundary. Pent by 

 the sea within an island, no matter how large, he is 

 sure to break through the boundary by artificial means, 

 and by a vessel, a boat, a raft, or even a log of wood, 

 to trespass beyond his original domains. 



Viewing the birds, insects, and other winged crea- 

 tures disporting themselves in the air, man at once 

 repines at his imprisonment upon earth, and longs to 

 follow them in their aerial flights. " Oh, that I had 

 wings like a dove ! " is the natural cry of man ; and 

 from the time of Icarus to the present day, he has 

 never ceased from the attempt to make himself wings, 

 and to launch himself boldly into the regions of air. 



By means of the balloon, he has succeeded in sus- 

 taining himself for a certain time above the earth, and 

 has risen to an elevation far higher than any which a 

 bird has as yet been known to attain. In fact, pigeons, 

 when thrown out of the car of a balloon, have been 

 seen to fall perpendicularly for a considerable depth, 

 before they found the air sufficiently dense to support 

 them. 



