The Natural History of Selborne

Mr Blanchard passed by us in full sight at about a quarter before three P. M. in an air-balloon!!!  He mounted at Chelsea about noon; but came down at Sunbury to permit Mr Sheldon to get out; his weight over-loading the machine.  At a little before four P. M. Mr Bl. landed at the town of Romsey in the county of Hants.

Newspaper clipping pasted in:  “Extract of a Letter from a Gentleman in a village fifty miles S.W. of London, dated Oct. 21.  “From the fineness of the weather, and the steadiness of the wind to the N.E. I began to be possessed with a notion last Friday that we should see Mr Blanchard the day following, and therefore I called upon many of my neighbours in the street, and told them my suspicions.  The next day proving also bright and the wind continuing as before, I became more sanguine than ever; and issuing forth, exhorted all those who had any curiosity to look sharp from about one to three o’clock as they would stand a good chance of being entertained with a very extraordinary sight.  That day I was not content to call at the houses, but I went out to the plow-men and labourers in the fields, and advised them to keep an eye at times to the N. and N.E.  But about one o’clock there came up such a haze that I could not see the hill;  however, not long after the mist cleared away in some degree, and people began to mount the hill.  I was busy in and out till a quarter after two and observed a cloud of London smoke, hanging to the N. and N.N.E.  This appearance increased my expectation.  At twenty minutes before three there was a cry that the balloon was come.  We ran into the orchard, where we found twenty or thirty neighbours assembled, and from the green bank at the end of my house, saw a dark blue speck at a most prodigious height dropping as it were out of the sky, and hanging amidst the regions of the air, between the weather-cock of the Tower and the Maypole; and then over my chimney; and in ten minutes more behind the wallnut tree.  The machine looked mostly of a dark blue colour, but some times reflected the rays of the sun.  With a telescope I could discern the boat and the ropes that supported it.  To my eye the balloon appeared no bigger than a large tea-urn.  When we saw it first, it was north of Farnham over Farnham heath; and never came on this (east) side of Farnham road; but continued to pass on tthe N.W. side of Bentley, Froil, Alton, &c.  and so for Medstead, Lord Northington’s at the Grange, and to the right of Alresford and Winchester.  I was wonderfully struck with the phenomenon, and, like Milton’s “Belated Peasant,” felt my heart rebound with joy and fear at the same time.  After a while I surveyed the machine with more composure, without that concern for two of my fellow creatures; for two we then supposed there were embarked in that aerial voyage.  At last seeing how securely they moved, I considered them as a group of cranes or storks intent on the business of emigration, who had “… set forth/Their airy caravan, high over seas/Flying, and over lands, with mutual wing/Easing their flight…”