reverse my former
flight, and descend into the great deep, to see its wonders, and compare
my sensations with those I had already experienced in the air. He told
me that my wish might easily be gratified; adding that, although he had
never been beyond the top of a steeple, he could take it upon him to
assure me, that the feeling of vastness and sublimity induced by an
aerial ascent, was almost in direct contrast to the sensations of the
diver--the one being comparable to the effects produced by the enlarged
views of generalization, indulged in by speculative ontologists--the
other, to those that result from the inductive process of searching into
the physical arcana of nature. He was not aware of the bent of my mind,
or his comparison might have been made more suitable to the feelings of
one who cared far less for science than the monstrous things of
thaumatology; but he had said enough, or rather the mere mention of the
subject was sufficient to fire my fancy; and, after he left me, I
brooded continually on the subject of the bed of the great deep--that
world unexplored by man, where strange creatures obey laws unknown to
us, and feed on the dead bodies of those who relentlessly pursue them;
where the bones of the men of distant nations meet and cross each
other--those of the sons of science and those of the unlettered negro,
bound together by tangled sea-weed--orbless skulls, the receptacles of
unclassified reptiles, lying on the treasures that the living man sighed
to bring home, as the reward of his toils in foreign lands; and where
the very mystery of the unexplored recesses throws a green shadow over
the strange inhabitants and things of the earth, buried there for
countless ages, that makes the whole watery world like a vision of
enchantment. I had found a new source of unthought of reveries, that
would supply my enraptured hours with aliment according to my wishes.
The objects to be seen within the short space circumscribed by the bell,
or comprehended within the range of its lights, could not be many; but
there was the new mode, as it were, of existence--the breathing under
water, the living in the element of the creatures of the deep, all the
multifarious sensations that would spring up in the mind and body, as if
some new power of life and feeling penetrated to the very well-springs
of existence.

A letter from Mr W---- soon afterwards invited me to Portsmouth, from
which I was then not far distant. The dive