In order to avoid a constant wastage of hydrogen in controlling the height of the balloon, he devised a double balloon; the larger one, above, was filled with hydrogen, the smaller one, below, was worked with hot air from a brazier, on the Montgolfier principle. At a height of some three thousand feet, while it was still over French territory, the double balloon caught fire and fell flaming to the earth. The earliest balloon ascents in England followed close upon the French experiments. On the 25th of November 1783 Count Francesco Zambeccari sent up an oil-silk hydrogen balloon, ten feet in diameter, from the Artillery Ground in Moorfields; it travelled forty-eight miles, and fell at Petworth in Sussex. On the 22nd of February 1784 a balloon of five feet in diameter, liberated at Sandwich in Kent, travelled seventy-five miles, and after crossing the Channel, fell at Warneton in Flanders. To inflate a bag with gas and let it take its chance in the air is no great achievement, but these were flights of good promise. The first person in Great Britain to navigate the air was James Tytler, a Scot, who on the 27th of August 1784 ascended in a fire-balloon, that is, a balloon filled with hot air, from Comely Gardens, Edinburgh, and travelled about half a mile. Tytler had been employed by the booksellers to edit the second edition of the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_, of which he wrote the greater part, at a salary of seventeen shillings a week; he passed his life in poverty, and his balloon adventure attracted little attention. The public mania for ballooning as a spectacle began with the ascents of Vincenzo Lunardi, secretary to the Neapolitan ambassador in England. Lunardi's first ascent, which was well advertised, was made from the Artillery Ground in Moorfields on the 15th of September 1784, in the presence of nearly two hundred thousand spectators. His hydrogen balloon, of about thirty-two feet in diameter, sailed high over London, and descended near Ware in Hertfordshire. His record of his sensations, written in imperfect English, and published in 1784 under the title of _An Account of the First Aerial Voyage in England_, deserves quotation: 'At five minutes after two, the last gun was fired, the cords divided, and the Balloon rose, the company returning my signals of adieu with the most unfeigned acclamations and applauses. The effect was that of a miracle on the multitudes which surrounded the place; and they passed from incredulity and menace into the most extravagant expressions of approbation and joy. 'At the height of twenty yards, the Balloon was a little depressed by the wind, which had a fine effect; it held me over the ground for a few seconds, and seemed to pause majestically before its departure.