Referring to this exploit, Tytler, in a laudatory epistle
addressed to Lunardi, tells of the difficulties he had had to
contend with, and artlessly reveals the cool, confident courage
he must have displayed. No shelter being available for the
inflation, and a strong wind blowing, his first misfortune was
the setting fire to his wicker gallery. The next was the
capsizing and damaging of his balloon, which he had lined with
paper. He now substituted a coat of varnish for the paper, and
his gallery being destroyed, so that he could no longer attempt
to take up a stove, he resolved to ascend without one. In the
end the balloon was successfully inflated, when he had the
hardihood to entrust himself to a small basket (used for
carrying earthenware) slung below, and thus to launch himself
into the sky. He did so under the conviction that the risk he
ran was greater than it really was, for he argued that his
craft was now only like a projectile, and "must undoubtedly
come to the ground with the same velocity with which it
ascended." On this occasion the crowd tried for some time to
hold him near the ground by one of the restraining ropes, so
that his flight was curtailed. In a second experiment,
however, he succeeded in rising some hundreds of feet, and came
to earth without mishap.

But little further information respecting Mr. Tytler is
apparently forthcoming, and therefore beyond recording the fact
that he was the first British aeronaut, and also that he was
the first to achieve a balloon ascent in Great Britain, we are
unable to make further mention of him in this history.

Of his illustrious contemporary already mentioned there is, on