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A VOYAGE IN CLOUDLAND.

The occasion is a large annual gathering, held in a beautiful park in a fav. ored corner of a southern county. It is a fine July afternoon, and a brilliant sun beams down upon a gay scene of white tents and rainbow flags, bright dresses and brighter faces, and is reflected off the brazen instruments of the military band and the polished metal of the scores of bicycles that twist and wind in and out in graceful evolutions to the time of the music.

A fringe of tall elm-trees borders the enclosure in which this fête is taking place, and in one corner, sheltered by the tallest of them, a huge, striped, red and yellow mushroom of silk and cordage is gradually rising from the grass, and filling out its loose folds in obedience to a stream of gas entering through a long snake-like tube.

At present the growing monster is held to the ground by a heavy ring of sand-bags hung upon the meshes of the network. These have continually to be shited as the silk lifts, and the task is being swiftly and deftly accomplished by our aeronaut, who, in his blue jacket and gold-laced cap, looks every inch the sailor he has good reason to consider himself, for he sails his craft over an ocean whose bounding shores man may never reach. And a right noble ship she is, holding in her shapely form 56,000 cubic feet of gas. And when at length the filling is completed, and she rears her stately height into the air, swaying gracefully from side to side with the fresh breeze that sweeps the field, and straining and tugging at her moorings, impatient to be off, her captain may well eye her with pride and satisfaction as a craft well worthy of his command.

And now the heavy ring is attached to the complicated cordage, and the bal

loon drawn out into the open while the car is brought forward and securely affixed. Then comes the cry for the passengers to take their places, and we rush forward between the swaying ropes and jump into the wicker basket which, for the next couple of hours. will constitute our little world. The wind is rising, and the balloon rolls and tugs yet more violently; but a score of strong arms are holding us down, while the captain stands paying out the sand-bags-till the exact lifting power is reached. "One more bag out. Now! Let her go!" And with one bound, amid the cheering of the crowd, we make a sudden plunge upwards, and rise swiftly a thousand feet into the summer sky.

How strange it seems! A minute ago we were clinging to the jolting car upon the ground, the shouts of the people ringing in our ears, the network straining over our heads; and now, in an instant, the field has sunk to insignificance below us, a wide and glorious prospect has unfolded itself beneath our wondering gaze, in which the tents and the crowd are but pin-points rapidly lessening from view, and the cheers have died away into a silence so sudden and profound that. for a moment, it is almost appalling. And yet in ourselves there is no change. To us in the car it seems as if we did not move. Surely we have remained stationary, only the earth has fallen away beneath us with a mighty swoop, and now is rolling backwards with a speed wellnigh bewildering.

But the stillness, the sudden calm and peace! A strange fancy strikes one. Is it like this to die in action? To the soldier slain in the height of battle must there not come a silence, sudden and complete as this, as the

shouting and the din of war melt away into the hush of eternity, and the released spirit rises into the fuller life, the freer world? A curious thought and a fleeting one, for impressions succeed each other quickly; and as the landscape opens into one vast panoramic sheet, familiar objects present themselves in most unfamiliar aspects, and we strive to identify each as seen from this new and delightful point of view.

There is the town, with its forest of chimneys scarcely dimmed by the light veil of smoke hanging over it. There the river, reflecting the rays of the sun off its sinuous course with such dazzling brilliance. There the grand Elizabethan House, its trim gardens, velvet lawns, and noble avenue of elmtrees. There-but where are we? Where is the earth? Where is the sky? What is this sudden pall that has all at once enveloped us in its stifling folds, and hidden the world from our eyes?

We soon learn. We have entered the summer cloud that, three minutes ago, from the ground seemed nearer to us than the rest, though far, far away in the vault of the blue. Its damp clinging arms are round us; they have diminished the light, and the air is thick, and hot, and moist. We feel strangely alone in our tiny car with the swelling roof of the silk above. No sound reaches us from the void below; no sign of life, no glimpse of earth; and though we know we are really hastening onwards to the east with the speed of an express train, yet the balloon seems to hang absolutely stationary, and not a breath fans our cheeks.

The experience is curious, if somewhat depressing, but it does not last long. More light begins to penetrate the mist, and presently, looking down, we catch momentary glimpses of the earth between masses of vapor. Soon we have left the cloud altogether behind us--and then what a fairy-like

vision dawns on our astonished sight! Seen from the earth, clouds have ever seemed to us among the fairest forms of God's creation; but now, instead of being beneath them looking up, we are above and looking down upon them as they hang between us and the ground. We are level with others, and see their fleecy masses from a height equal to their own, and surely in all our experience a sight more glorious, more wonderful and enchanting, has never before gladdened our eyes!

Around us rise range upon range of mountains, Alps and Andes and Himalayas, of shimmering white, with soaring peaks and shadowy valleys-but with this difference (one might almost say improvement) upon their terrestrial prototypes: Instead of being sharp and jagged in their forms, with hard and rigid outlines, these mountain shapes are soft and "fluffy," and their delicate mouldings are ever changing, melting and reforming, ever new, yet ever constant in their heavenly loveliness of spotless white and purple shade. Oh, for the brush of some inspired artist to perpetuate in softest coloring their incomparable beauty! But, in truth, look where we will, the prospect is equally enchanting. To be sure we see nothing directly overhead, except the open mouth of the balloon, and the gaudy silk through the transparent gas, but below us the scene, flecked here and there with patches of fleecy vapor, is as varied as it is extensive, and as beautiful as it is strange.

Although we are familiar with the country over which we are passing, we find it curiously difficult to identify the well-known features. This arises chiefly from the fact that, by reason of our height, hills and vales appear to us as one dead level, as flat as a map. Everywhere are harvest fields, golden and ripe for the sickle, or with the corn already standing in shocks that look insignificant indeed from 3,000 feet up,

for to that altitude we have now attained. There are stretches of open common, with straight white roads intersecting each other like a complicated puzzle. There are patchwork patterns of woods and meadows, over which floats the shadow of the balloon as we speed by. There are country houses standing in well-wooded parks, and ornamental water on which we can just distinguish the dots we take to be swans or wild-fowl.

Here and there a little village or quiet townlet clusters around its gray church, in whose churchyard the gravestones gleam white. The river winds in glittering curves through what we must suppose to be the valley, while across the face of the country runs the broad straight track of the Great Western Railway, spanned occasionally by Lilliputian bridges, and bordered by tiny white signal-posts that look like very diminutive child's toys-belonging, perhaps to that small Noah's Ark to which those ridiculously minute horses and cattle grazing in the fields appertain. Down the railway track we catch occasionally a puff of smoke, as a train creeps along like some strange species of caterpillar, and perhaps the faint echo of its whistle penetrates up to us every now and then. Save for this and the occasional bark of a dog or report of a gun, no sound soever reaches us. A large town lies now to the left, with tall chimneys rising above its sea of roofs. This is Reading and its factories, and beyond it we catch the glint of Father Thames. We are heading for Sandhurst, and presently pass directly over the well-known buildings of the Royal Military College. Soon Aldershot comes in view, its outlying camps of white tents plainly discernible. Below us are Bisley and Pirbright with the rifle ranges, and farther on Woking and the white stones of the great cemetery. In our flight, this fine July afternoon, we sail over many

villages where Flower Shows and Galas are in progress; and through fieldglasses we notice how every neck is craned upwards to watch us as we pass, and sometimes we fancy we hear the cheer with which we are hailed. We are conscious of interrupting the play of some score of cricket matches, and adding a new excitement to a dozen of merry school treats. Sometimes a child's shrill voice reaches our giddy height, and once, when the balloon has fallen somewhat, the notes of a strident piano-organ bear aloft a familiar tune.

We enter no more clouds, though they are piled thick around us and occasionally obtrude filmy filaments between us and the earth. The sun shines upon us hotly, and suddenly one of our companions in the car utters a delighted exclamation, and we turn to observe a strange and lovely phenomenon. Just level with us is the broad bulk of a snow-white cloud, and upon it the sinking sun has cast a perfect shadow of our balloon, sharp and well-defined. But around this shadow-framing it, as it were, in a fairy frame-is a lovely rainbow ring of brightest colors, a halo such as is rarely seen on earth, and not often in the skies. We are favored, indeed, on this occasion, and even our aeronaut allows that in all his many hundreds of ascents he has rarely experienced one in which so many beautiful effects have been combined.

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awkward to land in, and we have still a couple of bags of ballast left. So over goes a shower of sand, and swiftly we mount, up and up, till we attain to a higher elevation than we have yet reached, and now we find we are in sunshine again, for though on the earth the sun has set, yet from this great altitude he still seems well above the horizon.

The wind is fresh as ever, and we are soon beyond the pine-woods, and towns and villages succeed each other in quick succession. They are somewhat difficult to identify, but Weybridge and Walton-on-Thames are discernible, and the racecourse stamps Epsom beyond a doubt. There is a wonderful feeling of exhilaration in this calm though rapid flight, the immense height, the sense of freedom, and the pure unbreathed air. We wish our voyage might be extended for hours yet into the peaceful evening sky. But the sun has gone for good now, and our balloon is falling fast. Our last bag of ballast must be kept for the descent, now close at hand.

Lower we swoop, and lower, and our captain, with practised eye, is looking ahead for a safe landing-place, no very easy task considering the stiffness of the wind.

He has already unshipped the heavy grapnel, ready to drop it at an instant's notice, and has let down the long trail rope whose end is now sweeping the meadows to the vast astonishment of the grazing cattle. We pass yet another cricket match, and interrupt it this time in good earnest, for the batsmen drop their bats and join with the whole field in chase of the monster whose voyage is now so nearly over. "Look out for that tree," shouts our captain, as the top of a big elm looms in the way. We "duck" hastily, and the branches sweep the underside of the car as we pass. Beyond the tree is a house, and a garden with greenhouses, but we clear these and a wire

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tight!" and we do, with might and main, while the wind catches the dying giant, and sweeps it onward over the field, the car bounding merrily after. It may be doubted whether we are doing much good to the corn, but it is certainly helping us, for the springy stalks offer plenty of resistance and serve to break the force of the frequent bumps. Right across the field we go, leaving a broad track behind us; but the captain, though tumbled over on his back and his cap gone, keeps firm hold on the valve line, and our pace is slackening. Soon we hear shouts, and a party of countrymen, hot and panting, are upon us, and hold the car firm while we scramble out, somewhat dishevelled but quite unhurt. Ready helpers crowd in on every side, and in an inconceivably short space of time the gas is all out of the balloon, and the silk and cordage is folded up and packed into the car, the whole is hoisted on a cart, and we make for the nearest railway station through the gathering dusk, well satisfied with our afternoon's adventure.

And surely, too, we are the better, both physically and morally, for our brief visit to cloudland. Better for the pure air and exhilarating experience, and better also for our widened view into God's universe and the glories lavished so freely around us, whether we see them or no. We have been lifted, if only for an hour or two, into realms of peace and rest. We have realized, perhaps more fully than ever before, the vastness of the surroundings in which our little lives are cast;

how small a part we each individually play in the great scheme of creation. And our hearts must be dull indeed, and our eyes be dim, if the grandeur and beauty of the scene so lately wit

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nessed have not filled us with thankfulness, and with an overwhelming sense of the might, majesty and power of the beneficent Giver of All.

Gertrude Bacon.

CAT AND DOG LIFE.

It is time that the controversy concerning the superiority of cat or dog should be discussed on some more general ground than that of British feeling or human egotism. The case is prejudged, if we are to weigh the cat's merits on practical grounds, for the cat is essentially dramatic; or if we are to estimate her character from the Western point of view, for the cat is an Oriental; or, finally, if we are to consider the moral qualities of the cat solely in relation to the desires of the human being. In all such cases the vulgar estimate of the cat would be the true one, and, according to this vulgar estimate, the cat is a domestic, comfortable animal, usually found curled up like an ammonite; essentially selfish, essentially cruel, and apart from these two drawbacks, essentially feminine. "The cat is selfish and the dog is faithful." This sums up a judgment founded on wilful denseness and gross egotism. In respect to what is the dog faithful and the cat selfish? The judgment rests on this, that the human being is a very little portion of the cat's world, but is the all-absorbing object of the dog. Here plainly Greek meets Greek, and we had better let the accusation of egotism alone.

But apart from egotism, the above summary of the cat's nature and habits is about as true as the following summary of the sportsman's na

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ture and habit from the cat's point of view:-"The sportsman is a quiet and lazy creature, singularly domestic, fond of armchairs and smoking. eats less often, but more largely than other men. The only thing that interferes with his domesticity is his tendency to absent himself from the house for hours together, missing thus his proper meal times, and driven by a madness which is quite foreign to his nature. If you come upon him at such times he is engaged in a prosaic kind of wholesale slaughter; he displays little strategy, no agility in this pursuit, neither runs nor pounces, but kills his game at a distance through an unpleasant, noisy instrument. The sportsman, too, is absolutely dangerous to life at such a time, and we have known cats fall victims to his madness, whereas if you meet him at ordinary times he is quiet and tame, both to birds and animals, can be safely left in the room with the kittens, and has never been known to kill a caged bird. The keeper is a very dangerous sort of sportsman, and must be regarded as radically unsafe. The difference is the same as that between the rogue elephant and the elephant of uncertain temper." The fact is that the usual judgment of cats rests on a total misapprehension of the scope of a cat's life. The cat is above all things a dramatist; its life is an endless romance. The drama is

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