he descended, about three miles from the place where M. Roberts stepped out of the car. Jean Pierre Blanchard, a Frenchman, who had long exerted his ingenuity, but with little success, in attempting to perfect a mechanical contrivance by which he might be enabled to fly, was the next to prepare a balloon upon the hydrogen-gas principle. It was 27 feet in diameter. He ascended from Paris, March 2d, 1784, accompanied by a Benedictine friar. After rising to the height of 15 feet, the balloon was precipitated to the ground with a violent shock, which so frightened the friar, that he would not again leave _terra firma_. M. Blanchard re-ascended alone, and, in his ascent, he passed through various currents of air, as aeronauts generally do. He rose to the height of 9600 feet, where he suffered from extreme cold, and was oppressed with drowsiness. As a means of directing his course, he had attached to the car an apparatus consisting of a rudder and two wings, but found that they had little or no controlling power over the balloon. He continued his voyage for an hour and a quarter, when he descended in safety. During the course of the year subsequent to the Montgolfiers' discovery, several experiments on the ascending power of balloons had been made in England; but the first person who there ventured on an aerial voyage was Vincent Lunardi, an Italian, who ascended from London, September 21, 1784. In the succeeding year, he gratified the inhabitants of Glasgow and Edinburgh with the spectacle of an aerial excursion, which they had never witnessed before.