to
situations that, being new and wonderful, might supply my mind with a
species of experience, from which, in my after moods, I might draw, as
from a real source, all the _substrata_ of my creations. I visited
asylums, executions, and dissecting-rooms; accompanied Mr ----, the
aeronaut, in his ascent from Manchester; when on the Continent, I stood
below the falls of Terne, and descended into that hell upon earth, the
mines of Presburg; yet I must avow that I was a coward; the very
experiences I courted, I often trembled at, not only at the time when
the objects were busy with my senses, and sending their influences
through my nerves to my brain, but afterwards, when I called up the
images to my mind, and threw them into the forms that obeyed the
creative power of my fancy. I was also, in some degree, peculiar in
caring little for the works of fictioneers; if I were to try to account
for this, I would trace the cause to the same disposition of mind that
led me to despise all artificial modes of stimulus. The fancies of other
men roused my scepticism; my own, founded always on experience, and
never going beyond the province of the possible, seemed to me to possess
a reality sufficient to satisfy the conditions of my deluded judgment.
It had been fortunate for me had I been less exclusive in my resources
of gratification; and oh, how dearly I paid for these my imaginative
flights, may too soon be made apparent to those who follow me in my
narrative, to be benefited, I trust, from my errors.

I had nearly exhausted all my stock of real perceptions, and was
beginning to be forced to recombine my old thoughts, so as to produce
new associations of the strange and wonderful, when I accidentally met
with Mr W----, a gentleman well known in the world of experimental
science by the improvements he made on the diving-bell, in addition to
the contributions of Rennie and Spalding. I was then living at E----,
and he was on his way to Portsmouth, to superintend the workings of a
bell that had been sent thither for the purpose of recovering the specie
contained in the ship A----, which had been sunk on her return from
South America. He described to me the construction of the bell, the
manner in which it was worked, and the many extraordinary sights that
the divers saw in the course of their submarine operations. I told him
that I had accompanied Mr ----, the aeronaut, in his ascent from
Manchester, and had often felt a strong desire to