on a public-house floor, will delineate in very
tolerable heraldry, the coat-of-arms and motto
of any noble family you like to name; the
thin, haggard, moustached, restless-eyed
man who sells the tasty little roulette-boxes,
and who looks as if he had lost some
thousands at that enticing game himself; and
specially that leather-lunged Lablache of the
streets in the guise of a sweet-stuff seller,
whose deep bass solo

                     My bra-a-ndy bawls!
                     My bra-a-ndy bawls!
          My slap up, slap up brandy bawls!

yet rings in my ears. These individuals I
consider curiosities, and respectfully recommend
them to the notice of the compiler of
the Curiosities of London against the
publication of his tenth edition.

I am sorry that I have not the advantage
of a thick octavo volume, as a museum for
my curiosities. A poor little essayist, I am
limited to columns. I can offer no mighty
sirloin to my readers, but must be content
with a modest cut off the joint. Yet, to
employ the homely language of the proprietor
of the ham-and-beef warehouse opposite, I
am privileged to "cut and come again," and
when other curious things and people occur
to me, I shall not fail to trespass on your
patience once more.

            UNDER THE SEA.

THE town in which I am now living is
much changed from that it was some sixty
years since. My great aunt and her chambermaid
were almost the sole inhabitants of a
district that now numbers forty thousand
souls. It was at the very window at which
I write this, she sat (I have her letter by
me), and wrote these words to her sister,
dwelling inland—a shepherdess, with a satin
gown without a waist, according to this picture
over the mantelpiece: "The day is calm
and pleasant, and the great vessel in the
offing betwixt us and the fair island sways
not a handsbreadth, nor can flutter a single
pennant." Then, in quite another trembling
hand, and yet the same, is added: "When I
had written that sentence, Dorothy, I looked
again, southwards, and the sea was as still as
before, and the fair island sparkled in the
sun; but betwixt us and it I saw no trace of
the great three-decker. I thought my brain
was wrong, and rang the bell for Agnes; but
when she too could see nothing of the ship, a
horrid fear took hold of me. Moreover, from
the seaport, a mile away, there came a solemn
murmur, and a fleet of fishing-boats put off—
too late, too late, I fear—from every creek
and cove, so that we knew the glorious vessel
was gone down, with all her company. I
hear near a thousand men were aboard of
her; but at present we know nothing certain."

Even to this day this thing is interesting to
us; and furniture enough to stock a hundred
warehouses, not to mention snuff-boxes, card-
cases, candlesticks and knife-handles by
thousands, have been made out of the timber of
the sunken ship. Accounts of the dreadful
accident, describing how she canted over on
one side, bound in boards taken from the
vessel, are raffled for at all our watering-places.
The very walking-stick I use was rescued
from her hulk, beneath the sea,—or, at least,
it has a brazen biography upon it that asserts
so much. If a quarter of these things be
genuine, there can be little left of her. Two
ships were anchored over her for years, with
diving apparatus; and fathoms deep, and
miles away from shore, the divers plied their
trade. It is with some of these we have
to do.

The Seven Cricketers, over against this
house, was kept, until a few years back, by
an old diver. I often used to wonder, when
I was a boy, how he managed to accommodate
himself to that airy situation and dry
skittle-ground after his restricted sphere of
action in his great bell and helmet, under the
midst of the sea. Thomas Headfurst was
very communicative to me in these early
days indeed, and I was very grateful. I
could sit in his red-curtained back parlour
for hours together, under a fusillade of shag
tobacco-smoke, to hear him tell of the wonders
of the deep; and he never balked my wishes
in that respect. His family, he told me, had
been divers for centuries, long before science
had interfered with that profession—when
the poor

              Ceylon Diver held his breath,
              And went all naked to the hungry shark;

when stark, nude athletes, with sponges
dipped in oil, to hold more air than lungs
could carry, staid their five and ten minutes
in the caves of the sea; when Sicilian Nicholas,
surnamed the Fish, and webbed in hands
and feet like a duck, plunged fathoms deep
after a single oyster, a terribly exhausting
process before even the smallest of barrels
should have been completed,—who went in
for pearls and coral, however, also, and lost
his life in Charybdis by a, cup too much,
having already obtained one gold one from
the whirlpool, and dipping for another to
please the king of the Two Sicilies. One of
Mr. Headfurst's ancestors, it may be, was of
that party described by a savant of fifteen
hundred, "who descended into the sea in a
large tin kettle, with a burning light in it,
and rose up without being wet," a feat seemingly
as adventurous as that of the wise men
of Gotham in their bowl. Who knows but
that Thomas's great-great-grandfather (or
even grandmother) may have dipped, in his
(or her) time for the wrecks of the Armada,
in "a square box bound with iron, furnished
with windows, and having a stool in it" ? for
that is the description of a gigantic strong
box given us, by which two hundred thousand
pounds worth of property was fished up for