While following it with my eyes, I began to draw comparisons in my mind, and reflect on the rapid improvement made in these machines, since I had seen Blanchard and his friend, Dr. Jefferies, leave Dover Cliff in January 1785. They landed safely within a short distance of Calais, as every one knows: yet few persons then conceived it possible, or at least probable, that balloons could ever be applied to any useful purpose, still less to the art of war. We find, however, that at the battle of Fleurus, where the Austrians were defeated, Jourdan, the French General, was not a little indebted for his victory to the intelligence given him of the enemy's dispositions by his aëronautic reconnoitring-party. The sagacious Franklin seems to have had a presentiment of the future utility of this invention. On the first experiments being made of it, some one asked him: "Of what use are balloons?"--"Of what use is a new-born child!" was the philosopher's answer. Garnerin and his fellow-travellers being now at such a distance as not to interest an observer unprovided with a telespope, I thought it most prudent to gratify that ever-returning desire, which, according to Dr. Johnson, excites once a day a serious idea in the mind even of the most thoughtless. I accordingly retired to my own apartments, where I had taken care that dinner should be provided for myself and a friend, who, assenting to the propriety of allowing every man the indulgence of his own caprice, had, like me, been taking a stroll alone among the innumerable multitude of Paris. After dinner, my friend and I sat chatting over our dessert, in order that we might not arrive too soon at the scene of action. At six, however, we rose from table, and separated. I immediately proceeded to the _Tuileries_, which I entered by the centre gate of the _Place du Carrousel_. The whole facade of the palace, from the base of the lowest pillars up to the very turrets of the pavilions, comprising the entablatures, &c. was decorated with thousands of _lampions_, whence issued a steady, glaring light. By way of parenthesis, I must inform you that these _lampions_ are nothing more than little circular earthen pans, somewhat resembling those which are used in England as receptacles for small flower-pots. They are not filled with oil, but with a substance prepared from the offals of oxen and in which a thick wick is previously placed. Although the body of light proceeding from _lampions_ of this description braves the weather, yet the smoke which they produce, is no inconsiderable drawback on the effect of their splendour.