THE SUBLIME WAS CRUCIAL in giving balloon madness some cultural respectability. What was it and why did it matter? An idea with a long history, it had been refreshed in the mid eighteenth century and applied to a range of situations in which a viewing or feeling subject encountered something from which a powerful aesthetic charge resulted. This chapter explores how the sublime shaped thinking about balloons, how it paired and competed with ideas of the beautiful in the making of new aerial aesthetics, and how this reworking fits in to modern ideas about the aerial gaze.

As Michael R. Lynn notes by the title of his book, balloons themselves were described as ‘The Sublime Invention’, and ‘sublime’ is a regular fixture in accounts of aerial voyages. One example shows the frequency and typical variations of its use. When Richard Crosbie ascended from Dublin on 19 January 1785 to make the first successful ascent in Ireland, the sublime accompanied him: ‘Mr Crosbie himself assures us that his voyage throughout was perfectly smooth, tranquil and sublime’. What spectators felt was also sublime, with a theological colouring:

Boundlessness associated with the sublime meant its effects outlasted the event which gave rise to it. So sublime was Crosbie's achievement, according to this writer, that the grateful nation which held him in the highest esteem now would continue to look up to him in the future.