The Sun.
London, England, 1862-07-30 00:00:00

BALLOON MAD.

Mr. Cocking's house stood in a little garden in
one of the side roads between Kennington and
Stockwell. Either from Vauxhall or the Surrey
Gardens, balloons were continually going up during
the season ; and from Mr. Cocking's gardens all the
balloons that went up were affeetionate:y watched.
When in the warm summer evenings our drawing
lessons were transferred from the upper sanctum to
the room down stairs opening on this garden, we
had, now and then, very short measure of instruc-
tion. Sensitive to the faintest whisper of " bal-
loon !" our friend was out through the window, on
the instant when he found that a balloon was
visible. Once out, there ho would stand fixed
on the grass-plot with his chin up. While there re-
mained the tiniest suspicion of an ink-blot up aloft to
gaze at, there he remained at gaze. There is fasci-
nation, we all know, for many thousands who are
not balloon-mad in the long look after a man who
has floated far, far up into the sky. For Mr. Cock-
ing, it was utter and irresistible. We went on
drawing, and knew that we must consider our friend
up in the balloon. But in the old sanctum again,
as winter drew on, and after he had seen his last
season of scanty Christmas cheer, and when he was
enthusiastic with faith in his parachute and expec-
tation of a glorious descent in it ; when his own
little working model of it, neat and faultless as was
all the work of his dexterous hands, was being hung
ever, and talked over, and explained again and
again to us ; the simplicity of his devotion to his
subject was most touching If he sought any
fame it was to be remembered in the
history of aerostation. But on the labour
of his love he did not work conscious of a
thirst for fame, and I never heard him, in all hi▪ s
panegyrics on his parachute, dwell fora minute on
the possible money-reward success would bring;
though it may well be that he cheered and sus-
tained the patience of his wife with that sugges-
tion. If he glorified himself, it was in, not because
of, the parachute. It was the parachute of hi▪ s
fancy that he glorified and loved, as unselfishly as
ever poet, loved the idol of his dream. His faith
in it never wavered. It resisted every attack, met
every question, and backed as it was by what ap-
peared to be good evidence, conquered all opposi-
tion to his resolve to prove, at " really not the least
risk to his life," this parachute to be that for which
the ages had been waiting.—Dickens's "1111 the
Year Bound."

THE DOG HOSPITAL.—The dogs are, for the most
part, of little or no worth. I don't think the Duke of Beau-
fort would have much to say to the beagle I saw sniffing
about in the enclosure, and I imagine that the stout man,
who owned the small terriers at the show, would have little
to say to the black-and-tan specimens, which mustered
strong in numbers, but weak in claims to admiration, in the
shut-up house, in which there were so many lost dogs as in
the enclosure outside. The thing owes its existence, as has
been said, to a sentiment. It asks for but a very
tion, and does not enter into competition with those oiniron, !,
ties which would benefit the human sufferer, Ihe•"gliaboUt
small dona-
tion,
is a very small establishment, with nothing imPlinthink it
it—nothing that suggests expense or lux"y.. If people
is rather hard to laugh this human effort to acorn
iittie
money on
really think it wrong to spend a very voce little
that poor cur whose face I frankly ow"
successfully
often haunts
my Memory, after I have hardeonn
against him—if people really do
institution, let them
particular
residor it an injustice to
the poor, to give to this pakritticis somewhat hard that they
leave it to its fate ; but I
thinie into ridicule, or assail it with
should turn the whole steuns competitor with other enter-
open ferocity as a daligsr•
f should be slow to believe that
prises for public, favto
:the llolloway asylum is taken away
the ss. which is
sent to
for the want of it some deserving
4g go to
from the Poirh or wife and family, will actually
mechanic, With
all events, and whether the sentiment be
the dogs.
wholesome or morbid, it is worthy of record that such a
i _,,,
exiso ; an extraordinary monument of the remark-
ablere,,ard the
place o;
with which the English people baw affection
den fund of feeling
an evidence of that hid of
of dogs; race
the rough ordeal
survives in some hearts even „kw's " All
which
London life in the nineteenth centusY.-41"
the year 270472 a."