“After various trials and many successive improvements, in which our desires increased with our success, we determined to penetrate the aerial void as far as we could, providing for that purpose an apparatus, with which you will become better acquainted hereafter.  In the course of our experiments, we discovered that this same metal, which was repelled from the earth, was in the same degree attracted towards the moon, for in one of our excursions, still aiming to ascend higher than we had ever done before, we were actually carried to that satellite, and if we had not there fallen into a lake, and our machine had not been water-tight, we must have been dashed to pieces or drowned.  You will find in this book,” he added, presenting me with a small volume, bound in green parchment, and fastened with silver clasps, “a minute detail of the apparatus to be provided, and the directions to be pursued in making this wonderful voyage.  I have written it since I satisfied my mind that my fears of British rapacity were unfounded, and that I should do more good than harm by publishing the secret.  But still I am not sure,” he added, with one of his faint but significant smiles, “that I am not actuated by a wish to immortalize my name; for where is the mortal who would be indifferent to this object, if he thought he could attain it?  Read the book at your leisure, and study it.”

Here, by the way, we may remark, that the kind of vehicle best adapted for conveyance through the aerial void, has been a weighty stumbling block to authors, from the time of the eagle-mounted Ganymede, to that of Daniel O’Rourke; or of the wing furnished Daedalus and Icarus, to that of the flying Turk in Constantinople, referred to by Busbequius; or of the flying artist of the happy valley, in Rasselas.  When Trygaeus was desirous of reaching the Gods, he erected, we are told, a series of small ladders—­[Greek:  epeita lepta klimakia]—­but receiving a severe contusion on the head, from their downfall, he ingeniously had recourse to a scheme of flying through the air, on a colossal variety of those industrious but not over-delicate insects, the Scarabaeus Carnifex—­the only insect, notwithstanding, according to Aesop, privileged to ascend to the habitations of the gods—­

    [Greek:  monos peteinoon eis theous aphigmenos.[2]]

Most of the stories of Pegasi and Hippogriffs, and of flying chariots, from that of Phaeton downwards to Astolfo’s,[3] were evidently intended by their authors as mythical; not so, however, with Bishop Wilkins;—­he boldly avers, for several reasons which he keeps to himself, and for others not very comprehensible to us, which he details “seriously and on good grounds,” “that it is possible to make a flying chariot, in which a man may sit, and give such a motion unto it, as shall convey him through the air; and this perhaps might be made large enough to carry divers men at the same time, together with food for their viaticum, and commodities