_The Narrative is resumed and concluded. A learned Lecture upon Harmony, by which the unlearned hearer is not greatly edified._ Since you make so polite a tender of your patience, said De Lancaster, to me, who have already put it to so hard a trial, I must resume my narrative from the landing of Brute and his Trojans, when my ancestors established themselves on this very spot, I do not say in this very castle, under Camber, the second son of the aforesaid Brute. Lud-Hurdibras was the grandson of Camber, and King Bladud was the son of Hurdibras: he built, as is notorious to all the world, the city of Bath, and was the projector of those salubrious baths, that _William of Malmsbury_ would fain ascribe to Julius Cæsar, which I pronounce to be an egregious anachronism, and you may take it _meo periculo_. I take it at my own peril, said the colonel; for I have seen Bladud himself with these very eyes standing centinel over the bath of his own making, and I never met with any body hardy enough to dispute his title to it. Let it pass then! He was a benefactor to mankind by the institution of those baths, and might have been more eminently so, had his opinion upon the practicability of men’s flying in the air been established upon experiment. I confess there is much plausibility in the project, but I am also aware of some difficulties attending it, which merit consideration. I do not say it may not be achieved, but I am not prepared to recommend the undertaking to any friend, whose life is of immediate consequence to his family. It would be a famous lift, said the wooden-legged warrior, to people in my mutilated predicament; and though I am not quite disposed to the experiment myself, any body else, who is so inclined, will have my good wishes. That was exactly the language, cried De Lancaster, of King Bladud’s courtiers, and the learned men of the time. They unanimously declared that many notable discoveries might be struck out in astrology, which was the reigning study of the day, if men would fly up high enough to look after them; but they were not impatient to be amongst the first to fly upon those discoveries. My ancestor however, who was then about the person of the king, and an enthusiastic admirer of the sublime and beautiful, went a step beyond them all, and actually contrived a very ample and becoming pair of artificial wings, which in the judgment of the very best mechanics then living promised all possible success to the experiment. Upon their exhibition in presence of the sovereign and of a committee specially appointed, so charmed was King Bladud with the skill displayed in their construction, that he was graciously pleased to authorize and empower the inventor himself to make trial of his own pinions, with free leave to fly as far and as high as he saw fit, and to perch at discretion wherever it might suit him, the chimney tops and lattices of the chambers even of the maids of honour not excepted.