[Sidenote:  Horace Walpole]

You perceive that I have been presented.  The Queen took great notice of me; none of the rest said a syllable.  You are let into the King’s bedchamber just as he has put on his shirt; he dresses and talks good-humouredly to a few, glares at strangers, goes to mass, to dinner, and a-hunting.  The good old Queen, who is like Lady Primrose in the face, is at her dressing-table, attended by two or three old ladies, who are languishing to be in Abraham’s bosom, as the only man’s bosom to whom they can hope for admittance.

[Sidenote:  Horace Walpole]

Old age is no such uncomfortable thing, if one gives oneself up to it with a good grace, and don’t drag it about

  To midnight dances and the public show.

If one stays quietly in one’s own house in the country, and cares for nothing but oneself, scolds one’s servants, condemns everything that is new, and recollects how charming a thousand things were formerly that were very disagreeable, one gets over the winters very well, and the summers get over themselves.

[Sidenote:  Horace Walpole]

As I was writing this, my servants called me away to see a balloon; I suppose Blanchard’s, that was to be let off from Chelsea this morning.  I saw it from the common field before the window of my round tower.  It appeared about a third of the size of the moon, or less, when setting, something above the tops of the trees on the level horizon.  It was then descending; and, after rising and declining a little, it sunk slowly behind the trees, I should think about or beyond Sunbury, at five minutes after one.  But you know I am a very inexact guesser at measures and distances, and may be mistaken in many miles; and you know how little I have attended to these airgonauts:  only t’other night I diverted myself with a sort of meditation on future airgonation, supposing that it will not only be perfected, but will depose navigation.  I did not finish it, because I am not skilled, like the gentleman that used to write political ship-news, in that style which I wanted to perfect my essay; but in the prelude I observed how ignorant the ancients were in supposing Icarus melted the wax of his wings by too near access to the sun, whereas he would have been frozen to death before he made the first post on that road.  Next, I discovered an alliance between Bishop Wilkin’s art of flying and his plan of universal language; the latter of which he no doubt calculated to prevent the want of an interpreter when he should arrive at the moon.

But I chiefly amused myself with ideas of the change that would be made in the world by the substitution of balloons to ships.  I supposed our seaports to become deserted villages; and Salisbury Plain, Newmarket Heath (another canvass for alteration of ideas), and all downs (but the Downs) arising into dockyards for aerial vessels.  Such a field would be ample in furnishing new speculations.  But to come to my ship-news: