does and hurricanes we experience through the hot summer months. We realized this, much to our discomfort, as the sequel will show, in effecting our landing on the second day of our voyage.

A little while before the sun made its appearance, and when the dawn of the morning was changing the night scene of the voyage to that of day, we passed by the city of Fort Wayne, leaving it a little to the south. We were low enough to see several railroads converging toward the western extremity of Lake Erie. The country around, as far as the eye could reach distinctly,-and that was over an area of forty or fifty miles in diameter,—was filled with farm-houses, and the fields were well stocked with horses and cattle. In order to get an earlier view of the sun, the balloon was lightened of a quantity of ballast sufficient to raise it four or five thousand feet higher. It was not many minutes before a scene of the rarest beauty began to unfold itself in the eastern heavens. Phoebus was being ushered in, clad in his most gorgeous apparel. Words will entirely fail to depict the grandeur of the sunrise. The mind became overwhelmed with the intensity and brilliancy of the spectacle, as the sun was being quickly lifted out of the fiery deep by the rapid ascension of our point of view. We had now approached near enough to Lake Erie to receive the full force of reflected and refracted

light from its great surface. Various conjectures were given by our party in explanation of this singular phenomenon before we saw the lake. One surmised that the heavens were on fire, and that the phosphorescent illumination of the bygone night had been the harbinger of the world's conflagration. Indeed, the heat of this powerful reflection was smarting our faces. It seemed as though we were running right into the sun. The horizon appeared

to be bounded by a lake of white-hot metal, and it was

some time before I could find a sufficient explanation for the wonder before us. I finally suggested that it must be the illumination of Lake Erie, as we must be approaching it rapidly. To this the general assent of the party was given, especially when I stated that I had seen its reverse in a sunset scene while over the lake with a balloon, although in that case the effect was not nearly so brilliant.

This warmth of direct and reflected sunbeams soon began to tell on the balloon; and, finding it to swell out rapidly, causing such a sudden unfolding of its great pleats as to make it sound like ripping open a heavy canvas, I made a liberal use of the valve. This brought the air-ship to a lower level, with the sun several degrees above the horizon, and with it a corresponding expansion of the lake of fire before us. Now, since balloons are very sensitive bodies as to atmospheric density and to heat and cold, and thus very easily disturbed in their equilibriums, so that in the discharge of a little too much. gas a retrograde motion is given downward, we found. ourselves approaching the earth again, and the sun sinking down with us, until its immensely-expanded disk looked ten times larger than usual, as it was resting a little above the horizon. In the mean time a bank of bright purple striated clouds had settled around the god of the morning, and we were thus relieved from the heat and reflection incident to a higher altitude. The scenery below had now become remarkably fine. The mellow, early sunlight made immensely elongated shadows of the woods and isolated trees in the fields, as well as the buildings and the stacks of the crops that were garnered by the husbandmen. It was a glorious morning scene; and although something had been whispered about a warm breakfast, that formality was dispensed with from the

idea that the time was too precious, and that each one might lunch according to his personal convenience. . . .

At a quarter before seven in the morning we passed out over Lake Erie, with Toledo to the northwest and Sandusky to the southeast of our course. Before us the lake was dotted with islands, and its shores presented a ragged appearance. Heavy clouds were forming to the south and east of us. Ballast enough was now discharged to carry us up above the cloud-level. This obscured from our view the southern shore of the lake. Beyond its northern margin the land looked inhospitable, so we were contented to make almost a bee-line down over the middle of this interesting sheet of water. Its surface was ruffled with spray, and the waves were heaving on its bosom. At the rate at which we were now sailing, about sixty miles an hour, we calculated to reach Buffalo about eleven o'clock A.M. We could discern but few vessels moving on the water. Passing nearly over one, the captain hailed us with his speaking-trumpet, asking where we were from and whither we were bound. I answered him that we were from St. Louis, and that we were bound for Buffalo direct, and then as much farther as we could get. He continued the conversation, but we had so far outstripped him that it was impossible to make out what he was uttering, as we rose to a greater height.

Sailing at an altitude of ten thousand feet contracted our area of visible surface below so much that we thought it would be more interesting if we would lower the airship to within a thousand feet or less of the water's sur face. So down we came until we nearly touched the waves. Overhauling a steamboat that was moving in the same direction with us, we struck up a conversation. The steam-whistle was sounded, the boat-bell rung, and a speaking-trumpet conversation ensued. "How do you

do, captain? A fine morning for boating." The captain immediately responded, "Good-morning, my brave fellows; but where in the heavens did you come from?" "From St. Louis, sir, last evening." "And pray where are you going?" "Going eastward, captain,-first to 'Buffalo, and then to Europe, if we can." "Good luck to you!" said the captain: "you are going like thunder."

We were now only about five hundred feet high, and in half an hour after our colloquy with the captain of the steamer we beheld his craft dancing in the verge of the western horizon. He was travelling about twelve miles. per hour, and we at least sixty; and as we parted, leaving him behind, it seemed as though he was sailing to the west, while we were moving eastward.

IMPORTANCE OF LITERARY STYLE.

WILLIAM MATHEWS.

[We should be glad to transcribe the whole of this instructive and valuable essay, had we the requisite space. It will suffice to say that Mr. Mathews does not preach without practising, and that he himself possesses a clear, fluent, and attractive style, to which much of the high popularity of his works is due. The author is a native of Maine, where he was born in 1818. His principal books are "Getting On in the World," "The Great Conversers," "Words, their Use and Abuse," "Hours with Men and Books," "Oratory and Orators," "Literary Style," etc. These are mainly compendiums of very neatly framed anecdotes. Our selection is from the last-named work.]

WITHIN a few years a fresh interest has been awakened, among writers and critics, in literary style. It is beginning to be felt more keenly than for a long time before, that, as the value of the materials of a building, whatever

their cost, depends mainly upon the skill with which they are put together, so in literary architecture it is the manner in which the ideas are fitted together into a symmetrical and harmonious whole, as well as adorned and embellished, that, quite as much as the ideas themselves, constitutes the worth of an essay, an oration, or a poem. As the diamond or the emerald-even the Kohinoor itself has little beauty as it lies in the mine, but must be freed from its incrustations, and cut and polished by the lapidary, before it is fit to blaze in the coronet of a queen or to sparkle on the breast of beauty, so thought in the ore has little use or charm, and sparkles and captivates only when polished and set in cunning sentences by the literary artist. But there is another and more potent reason for the growing estimation of style. As an instrument for winning the public attention, for saving the reader all needless labor, and for keeping a hold on the grateful memory, its value cannot be easily exaggerated. A hundred years ago, in the days of stage-coaches and Ramage presses, when literature did not come to us in bales, and to be a man of one book was no disgrace, style might have been regarded as a luxury; but in this age of steam-presses and electrotype-printing, with its thousand distractions from study, and its deluge of new publications that must be skimmed by all who would keep abreast with the intelligence of the time, this element of literature is swiftly acquiring a new utilitarian value. When we consider that Germany alone prints fifteen thousand books a year; that one library only-the National at Paris-contains one hundred and fifty thousand acres of printed paper; that in one ramified science, e.g., chemistry, the student needs fourteen years barely to overtake knowledge as it now stands,-while, nevertheless, the two lobes of the human brain are not a whit larger to-day than in