Mr. Cocking was an enthusiast in aerostation--he was, in fact, balloon mad, and had spent years in inventing a parachute which he believed to be perfectly safe, and in which he ascended from Vauxhall Gardens on July 24, 1837, attached to Mr. Green's Royal Nassau balloon. The experiment was widely advertised, and when the day and hour arrived the poor enthusiast faithfully appeared, and ascended in his fatal machine for more than a mile. He then himself liberated the parachute from the balloon. For a few seconds he descended steadily; the parachute then collapsed, broke, turned over, and shot straight down to the earth a hopeless ruin. Poor Cocking was still in the basket of the parachute when he reached the earth, but was quite insensible, and in ten minutes he was dead. The parachute fell at Lee; and it is recorded that not only was the machine itself carried away piecemeal, but the dead man's purse was stolen from his pocket, his watch, his snuff-box, his eye-glass were taken, even the cap was stolen from his head, the shoes were pulled from his feet, the buttons from his dress. Such statements seem incredible, and for the credit of human nature one could wish they were false; but they have been seriously made, and never contradicted. [Illustration: MR. COCKING IN HIS PARACHUTE AT THE MOMENT OF ASCENSION. FROM THE 'WEEKLY CHRONICLE,' JULY 30, 1837.] The _Weekly Chronicle_ published several illustrations of this event. They represent Mr. Cocking in the car of the parachute at the moment of ascension; the Nassau balloon as it appeared from the Royal Gardens, Vauxhall; the parachute in its various stages in its descent; and Mr. Cocking as he lay for the inspection of the jury in the room at the Tiger's Head, at Lee. The first of these I have copied. This rash adventure was wound up by the opening of a subscription list for the benefit of Cocking's widow, which was headed by the Queen with 50_l._ The Gas Company that had supplied the gas for the disaster gave 30_l._, and the proprietors of Vauxhall gave the gardens for a benefit. Thus the friends who ought to have restrained the vanity of the enthusiast and the speculators who led him on to his fate did their best in the way of atonement; but it was clearly a case where the civil power ought to have interposed to prevent the fatal catastrophe. The _Chronicle_ varied its illustrations of events by an occasional portrait of a public man, such as Mr. T. Wakley, Mr. Roebuck, Lord John Russell, and Daniel Whittle Harvey. The Queen's first visit to the City, and her Majesty delivering her speech to her first Parliament, furnished subjects for large woodcuts. Early in the year 1838 the Royal Exchange was burnt, and this historical event was made the subject of an engraving in the number for January 14, 1838.