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Wonderful Balloon Ascents; Or, The Conquest of the Skies
·
Fulgence Marion
4
who
witnessed
the
ardent
enthusiasm
evoked
at
the
ascension
of
the
first
balloon.
No
discovery,
in
the
whole
range
of
history,
has
elicited
an
equal
degree
of
applause
and
admiration--never
has
the
genius
of
man
won
a
triumph
which
at
first
blush
seemed
more
glorious.
The
mathematical
and
physical
sciences
had
in
aeronautics
achieved
apparently
their
greatest
honours,
and
inaugurated
a
new
era
in
the
progress
of
knowledge.
After
having
subjected
the
earth
to
their
power;
after
having
made
the
waves
of
the
sea
stoop
in
submission
under
the
keels
of
their
ships;
after
having
caught
the
lightning
of
heaven
and
made
it
subservient
to
the
ordinary
purposes
of
life,
the
genius
of
man
undertook
to
conquer
the
regions
of
the
air.
Imagination,
intoxicated
with
past
successes,
could
descry
no
limit
to
human
power;
the
gates
of
the
infinite
seemed
to
be
swinging
back
before
man’s
advancing
step,
and
the
last
was
believed
to
be
the
greatest
of
his
achievements.
In
order
to
comprehend
the
frenzy
of
the
enthusiasm
which
the
first
aeronautic
triumphs
called
forth,
it
is
necessary
to
recall
the
appearance
of
Montgolfier
at
Versailles,
on
the
19th
of
September,
1783,
before
Louis
XVI,
or
of
the
earliest
aeronauts
at
the
Tuileries.
Paris
hailed
the
first
of
these
men
with
the
greatest
acclaim,
“and
then,
as
now,”
says
a
French
writer,
“the
voice
of
Paris
gave
the
cue
to
France,
and
France
to
the
world!”
Nobles
and
artisans,
scientific
men
and
badauds,
great
and
small,
were
moved
with
one
universal
impulse.
In
the
streets
the
praises
of
the
balloon
were
sung;
in
the
libraries
models
of
it
abounded;
and
in
the
salons
the
one
universal
topic
was
the
great
“machine.”
In
anticipation,
the
poet
delighted
himself
with
bird’s-eye
views
of
the
scenery
of
strange
countries;
the
prisoner
mused
on
what
might
be
a
new
way
of
escape;
the
physicist
visited
the
laboratory
in
which
the
lightning
and
the
meteors
were
manufactured;
the
geometrician
beheld
the
plans
of
cities
and
the
outlines
of
kingdoms;
the
general
discovered
the
position
of
the
enemy
or
rained
shells
on
the
besieged
town;
the
police
beheld
a
new
mode
in
which
to
carry
on
the
secret
service;
Hope
heralded
a
new
conquest
from
the
domain
of
nature,
and
the
historian
registered
a
new
chapter
in
the
annals
of
human
knowledge.
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