_Aërostation_ (Vol. ii., p. 317.).--The account published by Lunardi of
his aërial voyage, alluded to by M., is, in the copy I have seen,
entitled
"An Account of the First Aërial Voyage in Britain, in a series
of letters to his guardian, the Chevalier Gherardo Compagni,
written under the impressions of the various events that
affected the undertaking, by Vicent Lunardi, Esq., Secretary to
the Neapolitan Ambassador. 'A non esse nec fuisse non datur
argumentum ad non posse.' Second edition, London: printed for
the Author, and sold at the Panther; also by the Publisher J.
Bell, at the British Library, Strand, and at Mr. Molini's,
Woodstock Street, MDCCLXXXIV."
The book contains printed copies of the depositions of witnesses who
beheld Lunardi's descent; and Mr. Baker, who, as a magistrate, took
those depositions on oath, to establish what he thought so wonderful a
fact, erected on the spot where the balloon descended, in a field near
Colliers End, in the parish of Standon, Herts, on the left of the high
road from London to Cambridge, a stone with the following inscription on
a copper plate. It is still {381} legible, though somewhat defaced. It
is engraved in lines of unequal length, but to save your space I have
not adhered to those divisions.
"Let posterity know, and knowing, be astonished, that on the
fifteenth day of September, 1784, Vincent Lunardi of Lucca, in
Tuscany, the first aërial traveller in Britain, mounting from
the Artillery Ground in London, traversing the regions of the
air for two hours and fifteen minutes, in this spot revisited
the earth. On this rude monument for ages be recorded, that
wondrous enterprise, successfully achieved by the powers of
chemistry and the fortitude of man, that improvement in science,
which the great Author of all knowledge, patronising by His
providence the inventions of mankind, hath graciously permitted
to their benefit and His own eternal glory."