“Let posterity know, and knowing, be astonished, that on the fifteenth day of September, 1784, Vincent Lunardi of Lucca, in Tuscany, the first aerial traveller in Britain, mounting from the Artillery Ground in London, traversing the regions of the air for two hours and fifteen minutes, in this spot revisited the earth.  On this rude monument for ages be recorded, that wondrous enterprise, successfully achieved by the powers of chemistry and the fortitude of man, that improvement in science, which the great Author of all knowledge, patronising by His providence the inventions of mankind, hath graciously permitted to their benefit and His own eternal glory.”

COLL.  ROYAL SOC.

Gwyn’s London and Westminster (Vol. ii., p. 297.).—­A reference to Mr. Croker’s Boswell (last edit. 1847, p. 181.) may best satisfy Sec.  N.  “Gwyn,” says Mr. Croker, “proposed the principle, and in many instances the details, of the most important improvements which have been made in the metropolis in our day.”  Was this copied into the Literary Gazette?

Mr. Sydney Smirke speaks favourably of Gwyn’s favourite project, “the formation of a permanent Board or Commission for superintending and controlling the architectural embellishments of London.” (Suggestions, &c., 8vo. 1834, p. 23.)

J.H.M. 
Bath.

Gwyn’s London and Westminster (Vol. ii., p. 297.).—­Under this head Sec.  N. inquires, “Will you permit me, through your useful publication, to solicit information of the number and date of the Literary Gazette which recalled public attention to this very remarkable fact:”  namely, that stated by Mr. Thomas Hunt, in his Exemplars of Tudor Architecture (Longmans, 1830), to the effect that the Literary Gazette had referred to the work entitled London and Westminster Improved, by John Gwynn.  London, 1766, 4to., as having “pointed out almost all the designs for the improvement of London which have been devised by the civil and military architects of the present day.”

In answer to the above, your correspondent will find two articles in the Literary Gazette on this interesting subject; the first in No. 473., Feb. 11. 1826, in which it is mentioned that Mr. Gwynn, founding himself in some degree upon the plan of Sir C. Wren, proposed

“To carry a street from Piccadilly through Coventry Street, Sydney’s Alley, Leicester Fields, Cranbourn Alley, and so to Long Acre, Queen Street, and Lincolns Inn Fields, and thus afford an easy access to Holborn; he also recommends the widening the Strand in its narrow parts,” &c.

I need hardly notice that by the removal of Exeter Change, the alterations near Charing Cross, and the more recent openings from Coventry Street, along the line suggested by Mr. Gwynn, his designs have been so far carried out.

The second paper in the Literary Gazette was rather a long one, No. 532., March 31. 1827.  In it Mr. Gwynn’s publication is analysed, and all the leading particulars bearing on the “old novelties of our modern improvements” are brought to light.