Harper's New Monthly Magazine, No. IX.—February, 1851.—Vol. II.

Since we are speaking of Bremen, we may mention another object, of a somewhat similar kind, which that town possesses. Gesche Gottfried was a female prisoner, a modern Brinvilliers. She poisoned her husband (two husbands, unless we are mistaken), some of her children, and several of her friends and relatives. At last, in an attempt to poison a young man, to whom she was about to be married, she was detected, condemned, and decapitated. This was a few years back, and they have now got her head, preserved in spirits, in the Bremen Museum.

RECOLLECTIONS OF CHANTREY, THE SCULPTOR

Of Chantrey the recorded life and character are eminently simple and compact. Easy of comprehension is the tenor of both. The one was marked by steady common-sense; the other by progressive success. Chantrey was born at Norton, in Derbyshire, in 1782. The son of one of the few remaining small proprietors cultivating their own land, he received a moderate education, and was apprenticed, at his own instance, to a working wood-carver. Every onward step was marked by native sagacity. His natural gifts led him to the more ambitious branches of art. He began with portrait-painting. But his craft of wood-carving, securing, as it did, a subsistence, he did not relinquish till his position as sculptor was assured: a wise plan, since for eight years he, according to his own account, scarce realized £5 by modeling. He began with an imaginative effort or so, but soon found his legitimate field. With the £10,000 brought him by his wife in 1811, he provided himself with house, studio, offices, marble, &c., like a prudent speculator. From the epoch of his bust of Horne Tooke – an important patron to him – dates his success. This brought him into notice. Commissions thenceforward flowed in. The remainder of his life was a course of regular labor, relieved by constant hospitality and the periodic relaxation of country visits, and his favorite amusement, angling: interspersed with such occurrences as the visit to Italy; a few other continental trips; the erection, at a cost of £20,000, of a new house and offices, adapted to the growing largeness of his dealings, and his knighthood. With characteristic shrewdness, he early avoided committing himself to any political or party opinions. This, his prosperity, and his common-sense rendered him a great favorite with the English aristocracy. But too often, indeed, is the inane world of aristocratic Dilettantism felt hovering dimly near, as we read these pages. His large income and social disposition induced him to keep a hospitable house. And it was part of his tact to secure, without much reading, varied average knowledge, by frequent intercourse with men of science and letters. During the last two years of his life, his health rapidly and wholly gave way: the ordinary fate of his class, the hard workers and social livers. He was in the maturity of middle age, on his sudden death in 1841.

This course is as much that of a man of business as of an artist. Yet Chantrey's was a truly estimable, though no exalted, or rare character. There was a native dignity, a reality, an English genuineness about the man, legible in his whole life, and very engaging; even amid the chaotic adumbrations of the present biography. He was a favorable sample of a class not uncommon among us, the prosperous men who have risen through their own efforts, and deservedly. Generous, frank, hearty he was; above all, eminently direct in his dealings and character. One of his distinguishing features as a man, and as one of the class just mentioned, was his honest pride in his origin and progress in life. Without self-complacency, a manly consciousness of his true relations to the world pervaded him. The taint of flunkeyism in his position so facile to catch, touched him not. That respect for the intrinsic and essential, in character and position, his early circumstances naturally inspired, was never forsaken for worship of the privileged caste which favored and surrounded him.

One of those receiving freely and spending freely, he showed his sense of the value of money by its liberal devotion to the enjoyment of himself and all around. Ever open to tales of distress, he was the frequent dupe of his kind impulses. To his brother artists, he was generous in more ways than that of hospitality. Few earning a large income have manifested a better title thereto, by their use of it. In a profession inevitably unequal in the attainment of the prizes of fortune, compensation for the direction of so large a share into one or two fashionable channels, is found in so genial a worldly head of it as Chantrey. His generosity bordered on lavishness; yet even here, his prudence did not wholly forsake him. He left a large property; bequeathed, after Lady Chantrey, to the Royal Academy in trust, for purposes of doubtful judiciousness, but unquestionable good intention; in the way of fostering the "higher branches of art."

Rough and free in his manners, he was as full of bonhommie as good feeling. His letters are instinct with the heartiness and good fellowship of the man, and have a very agreeable freshness, and freedom from effort, if also, from any claims in the matter of thought.

In person, Chantrey did not belie his inner self. Mr. Jones, his biographer, indeed, gives us to understand, in one place, he resembled Shakspeare; in another, that it was Socrates he was like; and thereon, would have us accept a deeper similarity, of mind, to the Greek philosopher! A notion nearer the mark, is graphically supplied by his friend Thomson, when he begins his letter with a red wafer stuck on the paper; eyes, nose, mouth, &c., given in black. The symbol so pleased the sculptor, he adopted it himself as an occasional jocose signature.

Chantrey's intellect was a limited but emphatically capable, if not a very elevated one; ready at command and certain. All he said or did was, as far as it went, to the purpose. Altogether practical was the whole man. The sagacity of a sublimated common sense, was his prevailing characteristic. His mind was a perceptive one, not thoughtful or intense; making use of all that came in his way; gleaning information; receiving results, and applying them shrewdly. He attained proficiency in all he undertook, whether it were wood-carving, painting, portrait-busts, fishing, shooting. Without his range, were it but one step, he was helpless. But then, as a rule, he took care never to advance that step. And this was easy to him; for he was averse to all beyond the literal, and the every-day. The singular, the eccentric, in thought, manner of art, way of wearing one's hair, or any other department, he detested. "Let us stick to the broad, common high-way, and do our best there," was the instinctive feeling of the man. He was haunted by no unattainable, ever-retreating, fair ideals. No dreaming aspirations, or indefinite yearnings, had part in his life. His somewhat extreme, and in Mr. Jones's hands, quite over-done devotion to "simplicity," was very characteristic; in unison with that really satisfactory in him, but pointing to his wants, his restrictedness of feeling and unimaginativeness.

The same practical tendency and restriction of effort to things within reach, the sagacious, unerringly successful application of himself to the certain and definite, characterize his art: in the artist, ever the blossom and result of the whole man. Emphatic fulfillment does his success afford of the celebrated apophthegm of Mulready, "Know what you have to do, and do it." He did not spend himself on false aims, nor once lose himself in a wrong track. Having early ascertained his true field, portraiture, he consistently adhered to it, notwithstanding all "advice of friends;" though far from lacking ambition, or high ideas of the so-called higher branches. In this, his history is especially instructive, worthy of heed. He was faithful to the light that was in him. And in better times of art he might have been a still better artist.

SAILING IN THE AIR. – HISTORY OF AERONAUTICS

(Continued from page 173.)

In the history of aeronautics, the name of Mr. Charles Green, who first turned his attention to the art in 1821, occupies a prominent place. To him the art is indebted for the introduction of carbureted-hydrogen, or coal gas, as the means of inflating balloons. Great as was the improvement effected by the substitution of hydrogen gas for rarefied air, there are serious disadvantages connected with the use of that gas. In the first place, it is procured at vast expense; and, in the second place, it is difficult to obtain it in sufficient quantity, several days of watchful anxiety having been often expended in the vain endeavor to generate a sufficiency of the gas, which, on account of the subtilty of its particles, and its strong affinity for those of the surrounding atmosphere, continued to escape almost as fast as it was produced. Perplexed at the outset with these difficulties and inconveniencies, which had not only rendered experiments comparatively rare, but even threatened the art with premature extinction, Mr. Green conceived that if coal gas, which is much cheaper and can be generated with much greater facility than hydrogen, could be employed for the purpose of inflation, an important object would be gained. To put the truth of his theory to the test, he prepared a balloon, which he inflated with coal gas, and made a successful ascent from the Green Park, on the day of the coronation of George IV. He has subsequently made some hundreds of ascensions from the metropolis, and various other parts of the empire, with balloons so inflated; and, from the year 1821, coal gas has been very generally used in experiments of this nature. Besides its economy and easy production, it has the advantage of being more easily retained than hydrogen, which, for the reasons already given, is much more readily dissipated.

The ingenuity of Mr. Green has been exerted with the view of discovering other improvements in the art of aerial navigation. One great obstacle to the successful practice in the art is, the difficulty of maintaining the power of the balloon for any length of time undiminished in its progress through the air. It is ascertained by the uniform experience of aeronauts, that, between the earth and two miles above the level of the sea, a variety of currents exist, some blowing in one direction and some in another; and when the aeronaut has risen to the elevation where he meets with a current that will waft him in the desired direction, it is of importance for him to be able to preserve that elevation. But the balloon, in consequence of the increase or diminution of weight to which it is liable from a variety of causes, will not keep at that altitude. The great changes which are constantly taking place in the weight of the atmosphere, the deposition of humidity on the surface of the balloon, and its subsequent evaporation by the rise of temperature, the alternate heating and cooling of the gaseous contents of the balloon, according as it may be exposed to the action of the solar rays or screened from them by the interposition of clouds, not to advert to other agencies, less known though not less powerful, all combine in making the machine at one time to ascend and at another to descend. Thus it may be removed out of a favorable into an adverse current. To overcome this difficulty, and enable the aeronaut to keep the balloon at the same level without expending its power, by discharging gas from the valve to lower it, or by casting out a portion of the ballast to raise it – processes which must in time waste the whole power of the largest balloon, and bring it to the earth – Mr. Green suggested the contrivance of a rope of sufficient length and material trailing on the ground beneath, and if over the sea, the rope is to be tied to a vessel filled with liquid ballast, which floats on the surface. This rope will act as a drag on the balloon, when, from any of the causes we have referred to, it tends to rise, for, in that case, it will draw up a portion of the rope, and, by thus adding to its weight, will be impeded in its upward course; and, on the other hand, when, from opposite causes, it tends to descend, it will, during every foot of its descent, have its weight, and consequently its descending tendency, diminished, by throwing on the earth the labor of supporting an additional portion of the rope. This, however, at best, is a clumsy contrivance, and there are various objections to its practical utility. It could hardly be practicable on land, on account of the damage and danger that would be occasioned by the entanglement of the rope in trees and buildings; and at great elevations above the earth, the weight of the rope would become so considerable as to require for its support a large portion of the ascending power of any balloon.

In the United States, many aerial voyages have been performed. The first of these was made by a Frenchman, M. Blanchard, in Jan., 1793, from Philadelphia, at which General Washington was a spectator. Gillio and Robertson, both Europeans, were the next after Blanchard. No Americans were engaged in the business until Mr. Durant, an ingenious citizen of New York, took it up after Robertson. He made a number of aerial excursions, and was shortly followed by new adventurers in the art, among whom the most celebrated is Mr. Wise, a piano-forte maker in Philadelphia, who in 1835 betook himself to the trade of ascending in balloons, and who up to this date has made upward of a hundred ascents.

Mr. Wise is entitled to the merit of having carefully studied and mastered the scientific principles of aeronautics, and he is among the most enthusiastic of his profession. While admitting that the art has advanced but little since its first discovery, compared with other sciences, he anticipates from it, if perseveringly cultivated by men of genius, the most splendid results, adopting, as the motto on the title-page of his work, the couplet from Shakspeare:

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,

Than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

Some of his feats have been daring enough, and others still more perilous he is willing to undertake.

Not long after commencing the practice of his new profession, Mr. Wise resolved to test the practicability of descending in safety with the balloon, after it had burst, at the elevation of a mile or two. It would then, he conceived, form a parachute, and, from the resistance it would meet with from the atmosphere in its descent, would gently let him down to the earth. Having prepared a balloon of cambric muslin, which he coated with his newly-invented varnish, he ascended, as had been advertised, from Easton, in Pennsylvania, on the 11th of August, 1838, at a few minutes before two o'clock, afternoon, with the full determination of making the experiment, though he had concealed his intention both from the public and from his personal friends. He carried up with him two parachutes, the one containing a cat, and the other a dog. As the balloon approached a dense body of black thunder-clouds, some vivid flashes of lightning, accompanied by violent peals of thunder, greeted his upward course. This gave the first part of his voyage a terrific but grand and imposing appearance. It seemed to him as if heaven's artillery were celebrating these efforts of the new-born science, and, acting on his imagination, this inspired him with a fresh determination to explode the balloon. At different elevations, he detached first one and then another of the parachutes, with their occupants, which landed in safety. At the altitude of about 13,000 feet, the gas became expanded to its utmost tension, and the balloon was still rising, making it evident that, unless the safety-valve were speedily opened to allow a portion of the gas to escape, an explosion would speedily ensue. At this critical moment he became somewhat excited, and looking over the side of his car, he observed the sparkling coruscations of lightning springing from cloud to cloud, a mile beneath him, as the thunder-storm was passing, in its last remnants, below. He took out his watch, noted on his log-book the time – twenty minutes past two – and as he was about returning it to his pocket, thinking at the time whether it were not best, by opening the valve, to abandon, for the present, his favorite idea, the balloon exploded. His confidence in the success of the experiment never forsook him, and yet he admits that this was a moment of awful suspense. The gas rushed with a tempestuous noise from the rupture in the top, and in less than ten seconds, the balloon was emptied of every particle of hydrogen. The descent at first was rapid, and in a moment or two, on looking up, he discovered that the balloon was canting over, but the weight of the car counteracted its tilting tendency, giving it an oscillating motion, which it retained until it reached the earth, which it struck with a violent concussion, and the car striking the earth obliquely, Mr. Wise was thrown forward from it about ten feet. The landing was made on a farm about ten miles from Easton, and many minutes had not elapsed before he had resolved in his mind to repeat the experiment in Philadelphia on the first opportunity.

Having arrived in Philadelphia in the month of September immediately following, he consulted several scientific gentlemen as to his intention. Doubtful of the safety of the experiment, though neither questioning the philosophy of atmospheric resistance, nor the theory of converting the balloon into a parachute, they earnestly endeavored to dissuade him from his purpose. But confident of the perfect safety with which, on scientific principles, he would descend, he publicly announced that he would ascend on the first of October, and explode the balloon at the height of upward of a mile. On the day advertised, at twenty minutes before five o'clock, afternoon, he left the earth in the presence of assembled thousands, and rose almost perpendicularly, in a perfectly clear sky. When the explosion took place, the lower part of the balloon did not immediately invert, as in the former experiment, for in this case the balloon burst open from top to bottom, and caved sideways. At the first discovery of this, he was somewhat alarmed, fearing that it might come down with a continuous accelerated velocity; but from this anxiety he was soon relieved, for it caught the wind like the mainsail of a ship, and slid down upon the atmosphere in a spiral course with a uniform velocity. The concussion, though from the apparent rapidity of the descent it threatened to be violent, was not harder than that which would follow the jumping from an elevation of ten feet to the ground.

From the experience of his numerous aerial excursions, Mr. Wise is of opinion, that, at a considerable elevation, there is a constant and regular current of wind blowing at all times, from west to east, with a velocity of from twenty to forty, and even sixty miles per hour, according to its height from the earth. On the strength of this conviction, he believes it to be perfectly practicable and safe, not only to cross the Atlantic, but even to circumnavigate the globe, in a balloon; and he has expressed his readiness to undertake either of these voyages. About the beginning of the year 1843, he actually proposed to some gentlemen of the city of Philadelphia, the project of making an aerial trip across the Atlantic, in undertaking which, he assured them, he would have as little hesitation as about embarking in the most approved steam-vessel that plied between the ports of New York and Liverpool. At first, supposing him to be in jest, they expressed their willingness to promote the design, but finding that he was in sober earnest, they began to evince conscientious scruples as to the responsibility they would incur, if by any chance his life should fall a sacrifice to the bold adventure. He next determined to petition the Congress of the United States, at their ensuing session, for the necessary pecuniary means; and flattering himself with the hope of the success of his application, to provide against the accidents which might arise from opposing local currents and storms, or from omissions, imperfections, and unforeseen necessities attendant upon all first trials, he issued a proclamation, addressed to all publishers of newspapers in the world, announcing it as his intention to make a trip across the Atlantic in a balloon in the summer of 1844, and calling upon the seafaring community of all climes not to be alarmed should they happen to be in the vicinity of a balloon, either on the ocean or in the atmosphere, but endeavor to give aid to the adventurers. He proposed to have for the car a sea-worthy boat, which would be of service in case the balloon should fail to accomplish the voyage; and the crew was to consist of three individuals – an aeronaut, a sea-navigator, and a scientific landsman.

By the time the Congress met, Mr. Wise had enlarged his idea of crossing the Atlantic to a purpose of sailing round the world. In a petition he presented to that assembly, dated Lancaster City, Dec. 20, 1843, he certifies, that by taking advantage of the current from west to east, which, governed by a great general law, blows at all times round the globe, it was quite practicable, from the improved state to which aeronautic machinery can now be perfected, to travel eastward in a balloon with a velocity that would circumnavigate the globe in from thirty to forty days, and that the aeronaut, by taking advantage of the local currents, could vary from a straight course thirty or forty degrees from the latitude of departure, so as to be able to leave dispatches in Europe and China, and return by way of Oregon Territory to Washington City. He therefore prays the Congress to appropriate the money necessary for constructing an aerostadt of 100 feet in diameter of substantial domestic cotton drilling, with a sea-boat capable of enduring the ocean for a car, and so constructed that the masts and rigging may be stowed, ready for erection into sea service at any time that emergency might require. And he concludes by engaging, that, should his proposal meet with the approbation of the Congress, he would readily submit a plan in detail, and would cheerfully superintend the construction of the machinery at his own expense, asking nothing more than the command or directorship of the first experimental aerial voyage round the globe.

This petition was received and read by the Congress, and referred to the committee of naval affairs. But though the committee to which it was committed might not doubt that Mr. Wise had nerve sufficient to make the attempt, they probably had some doubts as to its practicability and safety, and therefore they made no report. Most men will think that the committee of Congress acted wisely, and that it is fortunate for Mr. Wise himself, that neither the Congress nor his private friends have, by supplying the necessary funds, put it in his power to risk his life in either of those foolish projects. The many accidents and hairbreadth escapes from severe bodily injury, if not from death, which he has met with, during the course of his profession, when undertaking much smaller excursions, scarcely warrant him to conclude, as he does, that such voyages would be attended with fewer risks than sailing in the most approved steam-vessels. To attempt to realize even his first idea of crossing the Atlantic in a balloon, would, in the present imperfect state of aeronautics, be nothing less than madness; to attempt to realize the second, would be "cyclopicus furor," to borrow a phrase from John Calvin – "a gigantic madness;" and we can only account for his forming or broaching such ideas, on the principle of vanity, or of that insensibility to physical danger which the adventurous gradually and unconsciously contract. We do not affirm that such schemes are absolutely impracticable, or that they will never be safely accomplished; for the astonishing discoveries already made in science render it impossible for us to say to what extent the elements may be rendered obedient to the sway of the human will. To speak of crossing the ocean, against wind and tide, in a vessel, by the simple aid of a kettle filled with boiling water, was, not many years ago, laughed at as the ravings of a crack-brained fool. A shaved head and a strait waistcoat were the promised rewards of the original projector of that most noble enterprise. And yet the foaming billows of the great deep are at this day hourly plied by the rushing steam-ship, bounding and puffing recklessly along, as though it were itself the victim of the madness ascribed to its projector, but landing, nevertheless, its precious freight unharmed upon the distant shores. Now, if such stupendous and astonishing results have been realized, what may not man, under the irresistible dominion of the great master-spirit of the age —progress– what may he not accomplish?" But it remains yet to be demonstrated that a pathway in a balloon through the atmosphere is less perilous than one in a ship on the ocean. The safety of traveling in balloons must be tested by smaller trips, before men will believe that these frail vessels of silk, or cambric muslin, may be safely trusted as a means of locomotion across the mighty Atlantic, or, what would be a still greater achievement, around the globe itself.