the First Aërial Voyage in England (1784), written as a series of letters to his guardian, Gherardo Campagni. Doubt about the experiment still remained in England, however, at least in some circles. Samuel Johnson, in a letter to Richard Brocklesby (September 29, 1784), dismissed ballooning as "a species of amusement": In amusement, mere amusement, I am afraid it must end, for I do not find that its course can be directed so as that it should serve any purposes of communication; and it can give no new intelligence of the state of the air at different heights, till they have ascended above the height of mountains, which they seem never likely to do. 29 June 1785 Lunardi's next flight was made nearly a year later on 29 June 1785 and left from St George's Fields on the south side of the Thames. Lunardi and Biggin, and two invitees, Letitia Ann Sage and Colonel Hastings, were supposed to make the flight, but the balloon wouldn't take off because of the weight. Lunardi and Hastings stepped down, and the balloon took off with Biggin and Mrs. Sage, making her the first English female in flight. 90 minutes later, they landed near Harrow, where the two aeronauts had to be rescued by a group of boys from Harrow School from the angry farmer whose crops were damaged. Lunardi then made flights in Liverpool on 20 July and 9 August that year before moving onto Glasgow and Edinburgh. Ascents in Scotland Vincenzo made five flights in Scotland in his Grand Air Balloon—which was made of 140m2 of green, pink and yellow silk, and which was exhibited, 'suspended in its floating state' in the choir of St. Mungo's Cathedral in Glasgow for the admission charge of one shilling. October 1785 On 5th October 1785, a large and excited crowd filled the grounds of George Heriot's School in Edinburgh to see Lunardi's first Scottish hydrogen-filled balloon take off. The 46-mile flight over the Firth of Forth ended at Coaltown of Callange in the parish of Ceres, Fife. There is today a commemorative plaque nearby. At the time, The Scots Magazine reported: 'The beauty and grandeur of the spectacle could only be exceeded by the cool, intrepid manner in which the adventurer conducted himself; and indeed he seemed infinitely more at ease than the greater part of his spectators.' On 16th October 1785 he took off from