court of Charles the Fifth, and ten thousand
persons. He told us how the first idea was
taken from a drinking-glass immersed in a basin,
and how the diving-dress was no more wonderful
than the diving-bell, being supplied, in the same
manner, with air through a tube. He told us
many other things of the same kind, which we
took very little notice of, at the time, being
more interested in the wet swimming of the
live diver than in any dry histories of the
invention. We forgot them all, long before the
picture of the goggle-eyed, floating bogie in the
pond had faded from our minds, and found
them, when we grew older, in the Penny
Cyclopædia.

I seized an opportunity, on this occasion, to
slink away from my companions, behind the
scenes (which, in this case, were garden-pumps
and electrical machines), and have a few
moments' conversation with, my friend the diver.

"Here you are agen, young 'un," he said,
as soon as he saw me; "does it rain outside, as
usual?"

"No, sir," I answered, "it's quite a fine
day."

"Oh, is it," he replied; "it's always wet with
me, that's all I know."

"I dare say, sir," I answered.

"He's been pitchin' it into you pretty strong
about me, ain't he?" asked the diver, alluding
to my schoolmaster's lecture.

"Yes," I said, "he told us when you were
invented."

"Look here," he returned, bending towards
me in a confidential manner, "I don't mind
telling you; that greasy pond ain't the sea,
mind that."

"Indeed, sir," I said.

"No," he continued; "I don't say any more.
This here ain't divin', and that 'ere ain't the
sea."

I was summoned away, with the other boys,
immediately after this mysterious communication,
and I kept my secret. The desire to see a
real diver strengthened with years, to give
place, at last, to a desire to go down in a real
diving-bell. The last words of the sham-diver
were always in my ears; the form of the show
diving-box was always in my eye; my reading
seemed to carry me among pearl-fisheries,
ship-raising, engineering operations, and places
where divers and diving were always mentioned,
until, upon growing out of the bondage of youth
and academies into the freedom of manhood
and the world, I lived for no other purpose than
to descend in a sea diving-bell.

I have a theory, founded on experience,
that what a man has steadily set his mind upon
doing, he is sure to do. He may have to wait
some years before the opportunity arrives, but if
his mind remain fixed in the same direction, that
opportunity will assuredly come.

The theatre of my diving-bell experiment
grew upon me by degrees: it was the Admiralty
pier works off Dover. It must have been ten
or twelve years ago, when I saw the first signs of
that work on the south coast, which has now
resulted in a projecting pier-arm of firm masonry
stretching half a mile towards France into the
stormy Channel sea, and which in twenty
years more, perhaps, will be finished as a
breakwater and a harbour of refuge. Sometimes
the workmen leave their chains, their scaffoldings,
and their blocks of stone, on a calm summer's
evening, to come back and find that a
storm in the night has swept away many costly
months of hard, patient labour.

It was at the farthest end of this half-mile
roadway into the Channel (thanks to the kind
exertions of my friend Mr. Smiles of the South
Eastern Railway, Mr. Wey the station-master
at Dover, and Mr. Lee the contractor) that I
was allowed to make my first acquaintance with
the bottom of the sea.

I arrived at the works, on the sultry afternoon
of the second of June, and was conducted,
at once, down a wet muddy lane of
iron tramway, between what appeared to be
solid blocks of masonry, raised on each side,
like the walls of some fortification. These were
square granite boxes, made to a certain thickness
of stone, and filled with a concrete mixture
of sea-sand, pebbles, and lime. This
composition, which takes several months to ripen
or harden, is used from motives of economy,
and when the boxes are fit for use, they are
piled one upon another, and form the roadway
into the sea. They are marked with a number,
a date, and a price—the latter being three
pounds sterling—which partly show the
progress and cost of the work. Near the sea end
of this lane, standing upon one side, under the
heavy overhanging scaffolding, and between the
concrete blocks, was a small wooden hut, not
unlike a fisherman's hut in shape, but presenting
the appearance of a rude early store in
Australia for the sale of boots, coats, and
Guernsey shirts. A large old cracked Lantern
was among the apparent stock in trade; but
seven-league boots, such as are worn by men
who go down the sewers, formed the staple.
Most of these boots were hanging up
against the wall of the hut, like specimens
of some well-greased black and unknown
beast; the great nails in the heavy sole, grinning
like a hundred teeth. One pair were lying
in a bandy legged posture on a heap of rubbish
at the door of the hut, looking like the limbs of
a fierce horse-soldier, whose body had been
blown away in battle.

This was the haunt of the mermen-stone-
masons, where the dry clothes of earth were
exchanged for the soddened, pickled,
salt-stiffened clothes of the sea; and here I, as an
amateur merman, was disguised, so that I
might have deceived my own mother as to my
identity.

It appeared that I had undertaken to do
something which, if not very desperate, was
very rare. No "amateur," as I was called, had
ever been down in a bell during the whole
twelve years the works had been in progress.
Princes of the blood, I was told, had exhibited
a desire to see something of the lower