In one of his early voyages he met with what he describes as one of the most perilous descents in the whole history of ballooning. The occasion was an evening ascent made from the Vauxhall Gardens one autumn night of 1848. The aeronaut was a Mr. Gypson, and besides Mr. Coxwell there were two other passengers, one of whom was the well-known mountaineer and lecturer, Albert Smith. A number of fireworks which were to be displayed when aloft were slung on a framework forty feet below the car. [Illustration: COXWELL. GLAISHER. ] The balloon rose high above London, and the party were amazed and delighted with the strange and lovely view of the great city by night, all sight of the houses being lost in the darkness, and the thousands of gas lamps, outlining the invisible streets and bridges, twinkling like stars in a blue-black sky. Coxwell was sitting, not in the car, but in the ring of the balloon, and presently, when they were about 7000 feet above the town, he noticed that the silk, the mouth of which appears to have been fastened, was growing dangerously distended with the expanding gas. By his advice the valve was immediately pulled, but it was already too late; the balloon burst, the gas escaped with a noise like the escape of steam from an engine, the silk collapsed, and the balloon began to descend with appalling speed, the immense mass of loose silk surging and rustling frightfully overhead. Everything was immediately thrown out of the car to break the fall; but the wind still seemed to be rushing past at a fearful rate, and, to add to the horror of the aeronauts, they now came down through the remains of the discharged fireworks floating in the air. Little bits of burning cases and still smouldering touch-paper blew about them, and were caught in the rigging. These kindled into sparks, and there seemed every chance of the whole balloon catching alight. They were still a whole mile from the ground, and this distance they appear to have covered in less than two minutes. The house-tops seemed advancing up towards them with awful speed as they neared earth. In the end they were tossed out of the car along the ground, and it appeared a perfect marvel to them all that they escaped with only a severe shaking. This adventure did not in the least abate Coxwell’s ardour for ballooning, and exactly a week later he and Gypson successfully made the same ascent from the same place, and in the same balloon--and loaded with twice the number of fireworks!