Yet they get to no end, and are still plunged in schism,
While the world's looking on, and exclaiming that 'tis hum-
Bug every bit—and as much waste of time
As thus cramming mag-knee-'tis-hum into rhyme.
The Ups and Downs of Life
THE UPS AND DOWNS OF LIFE;
Or, Polytechnic Pond-erings Elaborated in the Bell.
Mr. Green is, with all deference to the gentleman of another colour who generally assumes that title, the real Prince of the Air. He rides upon the whirlwind where he lists: the atmosphere welcomes him with hail! and the bridled tempest offers him its rains. If the perfection of the science of aërostation be so perfectly within his grasp, it is plain the elements must long since have yielded: he knows all their economies, and regards the zephyrs as familiar airs. The mischievous wind, so often presuming on its intangibility, by committing all sorts of depredations, and then scudding off, is compelled to confess its inability to cope with him, and to own the presence of "Green in its eye." Hecate is, compared to him, a dull, powerless agent; for his spirits do not wait for him on the rather uncertain tenement of a foggy cloud—which, from its surchargement with aqueous vapour in suspension, stands a chance of converting them into weak grog—but lie neck and heels at the bottom of his car, assimilating, in their nature, to bottle imps. When other people call a coach he unconcernedly takes a fly, and floats up like down. Other blessings attend his aërial wanderings. His champagne and stout are sure to be up; his cold pheasant is palatably high; and his other refreshments range far above all imitations. He takes leave of the world, not as an anchorite, but to enter a livelier grade of superior society, moving in an elevated position; and bears with philosophical indifference the wide reverses of his existence, from the most rapid rise to a subsequent decline and fall; although, at the same time, no man has more uniformly good prospects. We only wonder how he can tolerate our dull earth, and wager he never feels so secure with the flags of the pavement as he does with those of his own balloon. His very nature must have been reduced to what it works in—the atmosphere: and those who may eventually succeed to his possessions can be no other than the Airshire legatees. The rise and fall of the stocks affect him not—his own keep pace with his situation; and the glance of his eye sweeps the whole range beneath him with a bird's-eye wipe. There are but few difficulties on earth that he cannot grapple with. His balloon is his substantial and impregnable castle in the air, which he has built himself: and he always has his wits about him cool and collected, though, like a wool-gathering ruminator, he is constantly in the clouds. Although Mr. Green was long connected with the Polytechnic Institution, where his aëronautic whirligigs used to demonstrate the power he had acquired in guiding balloons, we are convinced he never went down in a diving-bell, for he would have been literally out of his element; unless the galvanic experiments at the same time could have chemically decomposed the water around it into its constituent gases, and he would then have gone aloft with his darling hydrogen. We once saw him contemplating the diving-bell; but it was with the air of an eagle of the sun gazing at a dabchick, apparently lost in wonder, not at the machine, but at the eagerness of the visitors to descend in it, to the chilly depths of the tank. It was evident that he no more regarded them as of his own species than the brilliant libellula, rising in the sunshine, owns the immature chrysalis lying at the bottom of the pool.
We ourselves, who are not a prey to such flights of ambition, hold the Polytechnic Institution, and its million wonders, in especial reverence from beginning to end, and think it fortunate that its professors live in enlightened times, or they would be assuredly burnt for necromancers, and form their own fire-clouds; producing photographic shadows of themselves, by the glare of their own faggots. Not being inclined to soar aloft, we rather approve of the diving-bell, and often pay it a visit. It affords matter of gratification to everybody. The scientific man goes down to measure the pressure of the atmosphere upon the drums of his ears, and see the displacement of water by air; the sightseer and curiosity-hunter, to experience a novel sensation; the hair-brained lounger, fresh from Regent-street, with his little stick and blotting-paper-coloured Chesterfield, to "put up a lark," although the bottom of a tank of water is certainly rather an unlikely place to find such a creation; and the lover of display, to gratify a trifle of ambition in becoming the pro-tempore lion of the place, as he emerges from the bell on its emersion from the water, in the bright eyes of the pretty girls who are looking down on his sub-aqueous venture from the galleries above.
The diving-bell, in the present era of compound-progressive science, is only in its infancy—its tinkle will, ere long, be changed to a toll: we speak metaphorically, and do not allude to the shilling paid for entrance. We have passed the adventures in the picture which illustrate the article "Bell-Diving," in the Encyclopædias, representing two gentlemen, who have secured places inside, holding air-tubes, and one, more venturesome, who has strolled to take a cold without, carrying a small bell on his head, and a boat-hook in his hand, amidst rocks and sea-weeds. Bolder schemes are in progress. The bell will open a new line for travellers to the Antipodes, by going right through the sea at once, and thus curtailing the journey by the geometrical relation which the diameter bears to half the circumference. Neither should we be surprised if people, addicted to go down to watering-places, go down at once to the very bottom, and choose waterproof summer villas on the beds of our lakes and rivers, exempt from land-tax and ground-rent; when, stationed in the water, they fling defiance at the law of the land. Such a position would be a fitting site whereon Father Mathew and his proselytes could erect a temple to the Genius of Teetotalism.