122 THE DOMINION OF THE AIR:
flights and even the inflations of those ships of the
air, which, his family associations notwithstanding,
took precedence of all boyish diversions.
His elder brother, now a naval officer, entirely
failed to divert his aspirations into other channels,
and it was when the boy had completed sixteen sum-
mers that an aeronautic enterprise attracted not only
his own, but public attention also. It was the build-
ing of a mammoth balloon at Vauxhall under the
superintendence of Mr. Green. The launching of this
huge craft when completed was regarded as so great
an occasion that the young Coxwell, who had by this
time obtained a commercial opening abroad, was
allowed, at his earnest entreaty, to stay till the event
had come off, and fifty years after the hardened sky
sailor is found describing with a boyish enthusiasm
how thirty-six policemen were needed round that
balloon; how enormous weights were attached to
the cordage, only to be lifted feet above the ground;
while the police were compelled to pass their staves
through the meshes to prevent the cords cutting their
hands. At this ascent Mr. Hollond was a passenger,
and by the middle of the following November all
Europe was ringing with the great Nassau venture.
Commercial business did not suit the young Cox-
well, and at the age of onc-and-twenty we find him
trying his hand at the profession of surgeon-dentist,
not, however, with any prospect of its keeping him
from the longing of his soul, which grew stronger and
stronger upon him. It was not till the summer of
1844 that Mr. Hampton, giving an exhibition from
the White Conduit Gardens, Pentonville, offered the
