A MODERN PEGASUS.
LONDON has this week been taking an imaginative airing ; not through the Parks, but above them. The grand invention which has struggled for preeminence with the philosopher's stone and the elixir vitse is said to have been realized, and man is about to share with the birds the possession of the air. So at least we are told ; but, having been told the same thing so many times before, we might have been incredulous had not the promise of the gift of flight been now confidently repeated in many well-informed quarters, and confirmed by embryo act of Parliament. That an Air Company should be formed, could excite no surprise in the city of London, where so many bubbles have been blown and burst ; but when it was found that the honourable and learned Representative of the city of Bath was imploring the collected wisdom of the nation to grant a charter to navigate the atmosphere and to colonize the clouds, people began to suspect there must be something in the wind.
We learn from those who have seen it, that the Pegasus is ac- tually in being. Its form has been delineated ; and if correctly, bold must be the man who will venture astride. With body stretching for many a yard, with tail lifted far aloft, with wings of copper like revolving shields, and with fire and smoke issuing from its bead, no griffin it was the lot of St. George to encounter ever presented form so vast and terrible : we question much, if even his stout heart would not have quaked at the onslaught. The Pro- metheus who has created this monster promises, however, that it is well broken-in, and will be found docile as swift. The pace, we hear, is to be a hundred miles an hour, be the same a little more or less ; and the universal mover, steam, is to be the agent. The town is now all agog to witness the flight. Paris is spoken of as the first point ; but as that city will be reached in two hours, the voyageurs will scarcely show their faces again at night without having visited Mount Helicon and tasted the waters of Hippocrene.
The projectors are praiseworthily endeavouring to allay the fears and to sooth the bitterness of vested interests, which this novel mode of transit is calculated to excite. It is awful, however, to contemplate the changes that must inevitably attend the success of their enterprise. When the company are fully fledged, and their Pegasi are on the wing, there will be no escaping from their intrusions. We must curtain and shutter our attics, door-up our chimnies, and cover over our gardens. The roads are now nearly deserted for railways ; the rail and the ocean are doomed to have their day. Be it in blast, bubble, or puff, there is nothing like air !
Previous page
