rapidly flattened to a maplike appearance: they get smaller and smaller, and clearer and clearer.

7. Away goes the earth, with its hills and valleys, its trees and buildings, its men, women, and children, its horses and cattle, its rivers and vessels; all sinking lower and lower, and becoming less and less, but getting more and more distinct and defined as they diminish in size. But, besides the retreat toward minuteness, the outspread objects flatten as they lessen: men and women are five inches high, then four, three, two, one inch, and now a speck.

8. As for the Father of Rivers, he becomes a duskygray, winding streamlet; and his largest ships are no more than flat, pale decks, all the masts and rigging being foreshortened to nothing. We soon come now to the shadowy, the indistinct; and then all is lost in air. Floating clouds fill up the space beneath.

9. How do we feel, all this time? "Calm, sir,—calm and resigned." Yes, and more than this. After a lit tle while, when you find nothing happens, and see nothing likely to happen, a delightful serenity takes the place of all other sensations.

10. To this the extraordinary silence, as well as the pale beauty and floating hues that surround you, chiefly contribute. The silence is perfect, - a wonder and a rapture. We hear the ticking of our watches, tick! tick! - or is it the beat of our own hearts? We are sure of the watch; now we think we can hear both.

11. Two other sensations must by no means be for

gotten. You become very cold and desperately hungry. To the increased coldness which you feel on passing from a bright cloud into a dark one the balloon is quite as sensitive as you; and probably much more so, for it produces an immediate change of altitude.

12. But here we are, still above the clouds! We may assume that you would not like to be "let off" in a parachute, even on the improved principle: we will therefore prepare for descending with the balloon.

13. The valve line is pulled: out rushes the gas from the top of the balloon; you see the flag fly upward. Down through the clouds you sink, faster and faster, lower and lower. Now you begin to see dark masses below there's the dear old earth again! The dark masses now discover themselves to be little forests, little towns, tree tops, housetops. Out goes a shower of sand from the ballast bags, and our descent becomes slower; another shower, and up we mount again in search of a better spot to alight upon.

14. Our guardian aëronaut gives each of us a bag of ballast, and directs us to throw out its contents when he calls each of us by name, and in such quantities only as he specifies. Moreover, no one is suddenly to leap out of the balloon when it touches the earth, partly because it may cost him his own life or limbs, and partly because it would cause the balloon to shoot up again with those who remained, and so make them lose the advantage of the good descent already gained, if nothing worse happened.

15. Meantime the grapnel iron has been lowered, and is dangling down at the end of a strong rope a hundred and fifty feet long. It is now trailing over the ground. Three bricklayers are in chase of it. It catches upon a bank; it tears its way through. Now the three bricklayers are joined by a couple of fellows in smock frocks, a policeman, five boys, followed by three girls, and last of all a woman with a child in her arms; all running, shouting, screaming, yelling, as the grapnel iron and rope go trailing and bobbing over the ground before them. At last the iron catches upon a hedge, grapples with its roots; the balloon is arrested, but struggles hard: three or four men seize the rope, and down we are hauled.

HEADS FOR COMPOSITION.

I. AN AËRIAL FLIGHT: what one expects first to feel-one's real experience—an author's amusing illustration—what he thought about Vauxhall Gardens.

II. FIRST IMPRESSION AND BEHAVIOR: impression of quietude and silence—what one up in a balloon first does.

III. VIEW FROM A BALLOON: novel appearance of objects owing to vertical position of the observer — diminishing size but increasing distinctness — final disappearance of objects in floating clouds.

IV. SENSATIONS OF A BALLOONIST: serenity due chiefly to the silence- sense of cold—of hunger.

V. THE COMING DOWN: effect of pulling the valve line-dark masses come into view - the bags of ballast - other details.

This amusing sketch is from "Pickwick Papers," the earliest novel of Charles Dickens, and the one to which he owed his first popularity. Written to exhibit the adventures of a party of Cockney sportsmen, it caricatures in a ludicrous manner the weaknesses, ignorances, and peculiarities of the members of a club of which Mr. Pickwick is the amiable chief.

1. "Now," said Wardle, after lunch, "what say you to an hour on the ice? We shall have plenty of time."

66

Capital!" said Mr. Benjamin Allen.

"Prime!" ejaculated Mr. Bob Sawyer.

"You skate, of course, Winkle?" said Wardle.

"Ye-yes; O, yes!" replied Mr. Winkle. "I-I am rather out of practice."

2. "O, do skate, Mr. Winkle!" said Arabella. “I like to see it so much!"

"O, it is so graceful!" said another young lady.

A third young lady said it was elegant, and a fourth expressed her opinion that it was "swanlike."

"I should be very happy, I'm sure," said Mr. Winkle, reddening; "but I have no skates."

Trundle

3. This objection was at once overruled. had a couple of pairs, and the fat boy announced that

there were half a dozen more downstairs; whereat Mr. Winkle expressed exquisite delight, and looked exquisitely uncomfortable.

-4. Old Wardle led the way to a pretty large sheet of ice; and, the fat boy and Mr. Weller having shoveled and swept away the snow which had fallen on it during the night, Mr. Bob Sawyer adjusted his skates with a dexterity which to Mr. Winkle was perfectly marvelous, and described circles with his left leg, and cut figures of eight, and inscribed upon the ice, without once stopping for breath, a great many other pleasant and astonishing devices, to the excessive satisfaction of Mr. Pickwick, Mr. Tupman, and the ladies.

5. All this time Mr. Winkle, with his face and hands blue with the cold, had been forcing a gimlet into the soles of his feet, and putting his skates on with the points behind, and getting the straps into a very complicated and entangled state; with the assistance of Mr. Snodgrass, who knew rather less about skates than a Hindu. At length, however, with the assistance of Mr. Weller, the unfortunate skates were firmly screwed and buckled on, and Mr. Winkle was raised to his feet. 6. "Now, then, sir," said Sam, in an encouraging tone, "off with you, and show 'em how to do it."

"Stop, Sam, stop!" said Mr. Winkle, trembling violently, and clutching hold of Sam's arms with the grasp of a drowning man. "How slippery it is, Sam!"

"Not an uncommon thing upon ice, sir," replied Mr. Weller. "Hold up, sir."