Page:The Present State of Peru.djvu/54

32 his commerce, cherishes his arts and sciences, renders his troops and fleets respected, and gives him a preponderance in the balance of power.

The Icarus of the age, M. Charles, quitted the banks of the Seine, and ascended into the region of the air, amid the applauses of an immense concourse of spectators. When he could no longer hear the acclamations of the admiring populace; when Paris had already disappeared from his view; when the Alps and Pyrenean mountains were, in a manner, annihilated; and when the whole of Europe merely appeared to him like a large spot by which the horizon was obscured; our aerial navigator was persuaded that he had quitted the vortex of the earth, and was on the point of ascending into that of the moon! Presumptuous and mistaken mortal, in that elevated region thou didst not exceed the level of the surface of the more elevated parts of Peru ! At the height at which it appeared to thee impossible that human beings should respire, those who inhabit that delightful angle have gardens and plains which rival those of Versailles. No: thou didst not soar to the highest pitch to which man, oppressed as he is