BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES. 85
incapable of appreciating the duties of social sober life. In another letter he
says :-
‘‘ The people of distinction in Scotland are blest with elegance and happiness,
and know not that insatiable ambition, which, while it swallows up every
other comfort and endearment of life, never fails to prove the bane of human
bliss ; their enjoyments are chiefly those of the domestic kind-a virtuous and
lovely wife-the education and company of their children.” Truly may we‘ add,
in the language of Burns-
“ From scenes like these old Scotia’s grandeur springs. ’’
Judging of Lunardi from his letters while in Scotland, he seems to have
been a youth of a warm temperamentamiable in his feelings-of a poetical
vein ; but extremely vain and ambitious ; and, like many of his countrymen,
volatile and irritable. Young and handsome, he was not only an admirer of
the ladies, but was in turn himself admired. The marked attention on the part
of the fair sex seemed too powerful for the youthful aeronaut’s good sense-his
conceit became intolerable. Once when in company, being called on for a toast,
he gave-“Lunardi, whom the ladies love.” This instance of bad taste and
audacious conceit might have been the burst of an unguarded moment, but it
had the effect of disgusting all who heard him.
In compliment to the aerial stranger, the Scottish ladies wore what they
called ‘‘ Lunardi bonnets,” of a peculiar construction, and which for some time
were universally fashionable. They were made of gauze or thin muslin, extended
on wire, the upper part representing the balloon. Burns in his “Address to a
Louse,” alludes to this head-dress in the following words :-
“ I wadna been surprised to spy
You on an add wife’s flanin toy ;
Or aibliis some bit duddy boy-
But Miss’s fine Lunurdi I fie,
On’s wyliecoat ;
How daur ye do’t 1 ”
Lunardi died of a decline, in the convent of Barbadinus, at Lisbon, on the
31st of January 1806.
No. XXXVII.
MAR R IA G E.
BY, reversing this Print, the merence between “Before and After” wiU be
readily observed, as in too many cases, to have been faithfully delineated by
Hay. This Print having found its way into Germany, was copied on the lids
of snuff-boxes, and other fancy articles manufactured there.
