arranged and carried out by the writer in the manner now to be explained.

Obviously the problem remained the same whether (as in the case of Paris) the goal was fixed and the starting-point was chosen according to the direction of the wind, or whether the starting-point was fixed and the goal chosen to suit the wind. Thus for convenience it was arranged that an ascent should be made from the Crystal Palace and a certain area (a radius of five miles round Blackheath station being determined on) was for the nonce to be chosen to represent Paris. Into this area it was the task of the aeronaut to convey one or more passengers carrying despatches, and this was satisfactorily accomplished with the odds of a double chance in favour of the venture.

First when the desired spot was thought to be reached a bearer of despatches (this for safety's sake being a dummy) was dropped in a parachute, and shortly after the balloon itself was made to descend in ground more carefully chosen, when in point of fact it was found that both descents had been accomplished within a two mile limit from the prescribed goal.

This supplied but another demonstration of the fitness of a free balloon for purposes of war where its special utility has not hitherto been fairly tested. It is not only when captive that the balloon as an aerial scout can be turned to account, but there can be small doubt that it will be found capable of rendering service, invaluable and all its own, when suffered to make its free and proper flight across the open sky.

JOHN M. BACON.

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An enterprising publisher has lately attempted a resurrection of Forgotten Books. Is it a task of the same kind that one attempts in speaking of George Sand, or is it rather that she has come definitely to rank as a Classic? As we all know, the doom of the Classic is to be praised and not read. Still there are a few eccentric persons here and there who read their Classics, who, when a new book is recommended to them, take down an old one. Years ago, on the advice of some elder, or perhaps stimulated by Matthew Arnold's graceful appreciation, we spent half-a-crown on an edition of CONSUELO in green paper covers, and to this day we are grateful for the hours of enchantment procured us by that delightful romance, and by others from the same hand. Surely the world will never wholly forget the creator of VALENTINE and LA PETITE FADETTE, the kindly and inexhaustible story-teller.

There are signs across the Channel that George Sand's work, neglected and decried during the high-day of Realism, is claiming its own again from critics and lovers of literature. Here in England we are by no means out of the realistic wood. We still demand of our novelists that they shall tell us something of actual life, --something about corners in wheat, or the wickedness of the Smart Set, or the machinations of the Ritualists, --the ways of Cardinals or of Hooligans, it does not much matter what. Neither does the public enquire too curiously into the competence of the novelist to instruct it. It is quite ready to take the Cardinals on trust

from Little Bethel and the Smart Set from Peckham. But it calls aloud for what it fondly imagines to be Actuality, and it shuts the door on Romance.

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Now nothing can be less actual, in the reporter's sense, than the novels of George Sand. That is not to say that they are not true to life. very great deal of close and careful observation is woven into them; much knowledge of human nature, a full and varied experience goes to make them. But with all this she was a poet and dreamer from her babyhood. Just as Scott went about his sheriff's work, or his business as a landowner, with the novel of the hour taking shape at the back of his brain, so she lived in dreamland, "with visions for her company,"-visions which are such good company for us because they were so real to her.

Her own career was as strange as the wildest of her romances. Part of it has been discussed more than enough; gossip about Musset, gossip about Chopin, the world can afford to let die. There is more to be gained by studying her girlhood, as we may do in the frank and detailed record that she has left of it. For what she was as a child, that she was as a woman, and the whole bent of her genius was conditioned by the circumstances of her birth and training. Her revolutionary theories and her aristocratic tastes, her piety and anticlericalism, her astonishing moral lapses and her persistent magnanimity and rectitude, her bad and good, in short, become less paradoxical and puzzling when we learn how she came to be what she was.