"
The stone upon which the above inscription was carved, stands, or
stood recently, near Collier's End, in the parish of Standon,
Hertfordshire; and it will possibly afford the English reader a
more accurate idea of the feelings with which the world hailed
the discovery of the balloon than any incident or illustration
drawn from the annals of a foreign country.
The work which we now introduce to our readers does not
exaggerate the case when it declares that no discovery of modern
times has aroused so large an amount of enthusiasm, has excited
so many hopes, has appeared to the human race to open up so many
vistas of enterprise and research, as that for which we are
mainly indebted to the Brothers Montgolfier. The discovery or
the invention of the balloon, however, was one of those efforts
of genius and enterprise which have no infancy. It had reached
its full growth when it burst upon the world, and the ninety
years which have since elapsed have witnessed no development of
the original idea. The balloon of to-day--the balloon in which
Coxwell and Glaisher have made their perilous trips into the
remote regions of the air--is in almost every respect the same as
the balloon with which "the physician Charles," following in the
footsteps of the Montgolfiers, astonished Paris in 1783.
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