"A gift-book for Christmas. A poem preferred. Limited text, and profuse illustration." What should it be?

As if by invocation, the Ancient Mariner rose before me! He stood in the doorway of my office, and held me with his glittering eye. He lifted his skinny hand to his long gray beard, and then gravely tipped his oiled hat. "The reader for Spry, Stromboli, and Smith?"

I had that honor, and handed him a chair. He sat in it after the manner of a flounder, concentrated his eye upon me like a star-fish, and produced a roll of manuscript with the fluttering claws of a lobster. Then he stirred and squirmed, like an elderly eel, looking distrustfully into the vestibule. I closed the door and begged to be informed of his business.

"I have a great work for you," he said mysteriously, proffering his manuscript. As he leaned over to do this, I saw a shining something on the top of his head, but the thick white hair concealed it when he resumed his place. The manuscript smelled as if it had contained mackerel, and looked as if it had come from the bottom of the sea. I found, curiously enough, some fish-scales adhering to it, and its title very oddly confirmed these testimonies—"Five Years in the Great Deep."

I glanced at the author with some surprise. He was the quaintest of mariners, and if I had met him leagues under the sea, I should have thought him in his proper element. His locks were like dry sea-weed; his cheeks were so swollen that they might have contained gills, but this was probably tobacco. When he wiped his nose with a handkerchief like a scoop-net, some shells and pebbles fell from his pocket, and his ears flapped like a pair of ventrals. I remarked as he pursued the lost articles over the floor, that he wore a microscope strapped in a leathern case, and a geological hammer belted to his side. He walked as if habituated to swimming, and when he shrugged his shoulders I expected to see a dorsal fin burst out of the back of his jacket. He might have been sixty years of age, but looked much older, and behaved like a well-born person, though, superficially judged, he might have lived in Billingsgate.

"A good title for a fiction," I said encouragingly.

"I never penned a line of fiction in my life," exclaimed my visitor sternly.

Referring to the copy again, I saw that it purported to be the work of "Rudentia Jones, Fellow of the PalÆontologic Society, Entomologist to the Institute for Harmonizing the Universes, and Ruler of Subaqueous Creation, excepting the Finny Mammalia."

"Ah! I see," said I; "a capital title for a satire!"

"Life is too grave, and science too sacred," replied my visitor, "for the indulgence of idle banterings. The work is mine; I am its hero; and it is all true." He wore so earnest a face, and looked so directly and intelligently at me, that I forebore to smile. "I have travelled in strange countries," he said; "Nature has been bountiful in her revelations to me, indeed; my experiences have been so individual, that I sometimes discredit them myself. I do not complain that others ridicule them."

He spoke in the manner of one devoted to his species; and an easy dignity, which some trace to high birth and the consciousness of dominion, became him very naturally. The eldest of the admirals, or old Neptune himself, could not have seemed more kingly; but once or twice he started at a noise from the publishing-house, as if longing to get back to his legitimate brine. I told him to leave the manuscript in my hands for a fortnight, that I might form an opinion as to its claims for publication.

"No!" he said quickly. "It is not a girl's romance, or a boy's poem, or the strollings of a man-errant: it is of such rare value that gold cannot purchase it; it is so priceless that I cannot own it myself; it is like the air, or the water, or the light, or the magnet—the property of all the peoples. It must not leave my sight. I must read it to you now!"

He literally held me with his eye. He stood erect dilating, until he seemed to reach the height of a mainmast, as long and lank and brown as the subject of the veritable rime; and his ears, contracted, flapped like the pectorals of a flying-fish. It was uncertain whether he was going to fly or swim, or seize and shake me. I believed him to be either a lunatic or an apparition; but when the frenzy of the moment was over, he became a very harmless, kindly, and grave old gentleman, who begged my pardon for transgressing decorum in the enthusiasm for his "great work." He still smelled abominably of fish, but I could not take it into my heart to be harsh with this most pertinacious of authors.

I had been but a short time in the service of Spry, Stromboli & Smith, and my nerves had not yet been exercised by sensitive and eccentric writers. I had led a vagabond career myself, and had frequent reason, in my incipient literary days, to be grieved with publishers' "readers;" and when promoted to the same exalted place, I resolved to be charitable, careful, and obliging—to do as I would be done by—to crush no delicate Keats, to enrage no Johnson, by slight, prejudice, or deprecation. But to suffer the infliction of a crack-brained old naturalist, repeating an interminable manuscript in my own office, went beyond my best resolve! Still there was little to do. It would be a paltry task to select a poem for illustration, and had not this same Ancient Mariner suggested an admirable one?

"I can grant your request in part, Mr. Jones," I said at length; "you may read one hour; and if at the end of that period I do not think favorably of your article, you must promise to read no further."

The old gentleman gave his parole at once, took a pair of great green spectacles from a sea-grass case, and blowing his nose again, rained pebbles and marine shells over the whole office. When he took the manuscript from my hand, I saw the shining something distinctly on the top of his head; and when he sat back to read, he was a perfect copy of a dry old king-fish, looking through a pair of staring, glaring, green eyes. Without more ado, and in a rippling kind of voice, as of the rushing of deep water, the old naturalist read the following introduction to a most wonderful manuscript:

"At a very early period of my life I manifested an inclination for the study of the sciences. In my eighteenth year I submitted a theory of inter-stellar telegraphing to the Gymnotian Academy. It was my purpose to have placed the papers simultaneously before the scientific bodies of each of the seven planets in our constellation, but having no capital, the design failed, though I was complimented thereupon by the 'Institute for Harmonizing the Universes,' and elected a contributing member of that society. For several years I petitioned annually for outfit and transportation to Scilly Islands,[2] on the Ecliptic Circle, where I purposed to develop my scheme of transferring a portion of our globe to the system of Orion. In this I was opposed by the PalÆontologic Society, on the ground that some valuable fossils were presumed to be there; and Parliament, opining that my protests were subversive of the law of gravity, rejected them. A number of projects, each of which, I firmly believe, would have benefited my kind, and facilitated correspondence between all created beings, terminated unfortunately, and my relatives at length placed it out of my power to continue these philanthropic exertions. For some years I was denied the ear of man, and in the interval my hair grew gray and my body a trifle faint. But the lofty impulses of youth survived. My mind could not be imprisoned, and I held communication with the stars through the grating of my chamber in the still midnight. At last the relief came. I had long prayed for it! My deliverer was Sirius, the brightest of the celestial intelligences. He shone upon my window bars with an intense concentrated light, and they reddened and melted before daybreak. I fled to Glasgow in the month of April, 184-, and obtained a captain's clerkship on the whaler Crimson Dragon.

"We took in water at the Shetland Islands, and sailing north-westward, skirted the coast of Greenland, whence, cruising in a southerly direction, we lay off Labrador, and waited for our prey. Our crew was fifty men, all told. Our captain had been a whaler thirty-eight years, and had killed five hundred and six animals or eight more than the renowned Scoresby. We carried seven light-boats for actual service, and twenty-seven thousand feet, or more than five miles, of rope. Three men kept watch, day and night, in the 'crow's-nest,' at the maintop; but though we beat along the whole coast, through Davis' Strait, and among the mighty icebergs of Baffin's Bay, we saw no cetaceous creatures, save twice some floundering porpoises, and thrice a solitary grampus. With these beings I endeavored to open communication, but they made no intelligible responses. The stars also of this latitude failed to comprehend my signals, from which I concluded that they were less intelligent than those of more temperate skies. But with the animalcules of the sea I obtained most gratifying relations. A series of experiments with the infusoria satisfied me that they were not loath to an exchange of information, and finally they followed the ship by myriads, so that all the waves were full of fire, which the sailors remarked; and fearful of being observed, I ceased my experiments for a time.

"On the evening of the fifth Saturday of our cruise, I waited till the changing of the watch; then I stole noiselessly upon deck, and secreted myself behind a life-boat which hung at the side of the vessel. The helmsman was nodding silently upon his tiller; two seamen sat motionless upon the bow, and the lookout party in the crow's-nest talked mutteringly of our ill-luck as they scanned the horizon. The Northern Lights were pulsing like some great radiating heart, and the sea was alternately flame and shadow. The headlands of Labrador lay to the south—bare, boundless, precipitous; and to the east a glittering iceberg floated slowly towards us, like a palace of gold and emerald. The ship rolled calmly upon the long swells, the ripples plashing in low lulling monotone, and her hull and spars were reflected darkly beneath me. I drew a long gray hair from my temple, and subjected it to a gentle friction between my palm and finger; then I pricked my wrist, and leaning forward, placed it against my heart: five blood-drops—symbols of the five types of organized creation—fell simmering into the depths, and the scintillant hair, floating after them, described a true spiral. In an instant the Aurora grew bright to blindness; there was a rush of infinite stars, and a host of beautiful beings fluttered to the surface of the sea, within the shadow of the ship! A gull darted along the water, and in the far distance I heard the bellow of the huge Greenland whale. All animate nature had acknowledged my message; I had touched the nerve of the universes!

"'Blow me if there warn't a whale, Ben!' said one of the men in the maintop.

"'My eyes! but it wor like it,' replied the other.

"Fearful of being remarked, I slipped below, a second time disappointed, but with such exultant feelings that I tried in vain to sleep. The intimacy of species and their common language, lost in the degeneracy of the first human beings, were about to be restored by me. Confusion had overcome the counsels of the countless things which had talked and dwelt together in the past, but science was about to win back from sin the great secret of communication. I should translate the scream of eagles and the cooing of doves; I should hear the gossip of my household kittens, and speak familiarly with the mighty hippopotami. The serpent should teach me his traditions, and the multitude of mollusks should develop the mysteries of their sluggish vitality; nay, the plurality of worlds should be demonstrated, and with the combined intelligences of all the systems, we should wrest the mysteries of life, matter, and eternity from their Divine repository!

"I lay awake all night revelling in these anticipations, and at dawn was quite weak of body. It was now the Sabbath, and at nine o'clock all hands were summoned to the poop-deck for the customary worship. I lay upon a coil of rope, when the mate commenced to read the service, and a deep drowsiness came over me. The lesson was a part of the first chapter of Genesis—the weird history of creation. He had reached the twenty-eighth verse when I dropped asleep. It could have been only an instant's forgetfulness, for when I awoke he had not finished the reading of the same verse, but in that instant a vision had passed before me.

"A female of marvellous beauty rose from the water. I had seen the long green locks, the eyes of azure, and the glossy neck—it was Tethys, the queen of the sea-nymphs. She was begotten of humidity in the remote beginning, and seemed even now cloudy and incorporeal. Euripius, the divinity of whirlpools, lay in the waves at her feet, projecting a spectrum of spray, in an arch, above her head.

"'Man,' she said, or rather rippled, for it was like the even voice of waters, 'your love of nature, the boundlessness of your kindness, the daring of your speculation, the profoundness of your introspection, have made you one of us. Awake, and hear our decree!'

"She melted into vapor, and disappeared. I opened my eyes. The crew were grouped about the deck, the mate was reading the lesson, the words which I heard were: 'Have dominion over the fish!'

"'A fall! a fall!' was shouted from the maintop. The men on watch had discovered the long-expected prey.

"'Man the boats!' cried the captain; 'all hands be spry! Where away, look out?'

"'Sou'-west!' answered the crow's-nest, 'about two leagues. There must be hoceans of 'em! They 'eave like water-spouts, and, lor! how they lobtail!'

"The seven boats were arranged in curved shape, so as to form a semicircle around the animals; and the captain's, of which I took the helm, formed the left tip of the crescent. We pulled steadily for a half-hour over a smooth sea, and came at length so close to our victims that we could count them. Truly it was 'a fall'! A few cubs played recklessly around the surface; but there was an enormous bull, whose bulk was much greater than that of the ship's hull, which came once in full view, dived vertically, and beat the water with his terrible tail, making such billows that a storm seemed to be raging. The other animals swam in the froth and foam thus developed, now plunging to the far depths, now shooting their huge bodies into the air, and falling with a splash, as of the emptying of the ocean. The scene was so exciting that even my wonderful discoveries passed out of mind. Our oars dipped noiselessly; the crews were silent; the harpooners stood, each in the bow of his launch, with naked weapons extended, waiting to strike. The first opportunity occurred to the launch on our extreme right. At the distance of twenty yards the executioner hurled his javelin full into the back of the great bull; a roar ensued and a frightful leap. The other creatures repeated the agonized cry, and they swam southward with the velocity of a ship under full sail.

"'Now, lads, bend your oars!' shouted the captain through his trumpet. The entire length of rope unwound directly from the reel or 'bollard' of the first launch, and the line of a second boat was attached forthwith; a third and a fourth were annexed, but the whale exhibited no sign of exhaustion, and dragged his pursuers like the wind. A fifth and a sixth line spun out. The captain's cheek grew pale, and he opened his clasp-knife with a curse upon his lips. There remained the line of our boat alone: unless the monster stopped within ten minutes, we should lose every foot of the ship's cordage, and this last rope would have to be severed. Tremulously a seaman attached it; it was whirled out as if by a locomotive. The oars moved like light, but no human activity could approach that of our victim. He nearly swamped the launch, and the friction of the bollard threatened to set it ablaze.

"'What devil of the deep is this?' said the captain, bending forward with his blade. The sailors ceased with hot faces, and stared aghast. I seemed to hear calling voices; I grew faint and blind. The bollard snapped with a dead, dull sound; I was entangled in the stout twine, and tossed into the sea. Some oars were thrown overboard, that I might be buoyed up. Three of the launches were turned toward me, and the seamen called aloud that I should keep up courage. But the line pulled me downward; my heart ceased to beat; I beheld with indescribable terror the pale surface receding, and the dark shapes of the vessels above me were finally lost to view. I knew that at the first inhalation the brine would fill my mouth and lungs; I held my breath hard, and tried to pray. Down, down, down into the blue depths—a cycle of protracted years it seemed! My ears were stunned with strange noises; my lips parted, and at length the sea rushed into my throat; for an instant I seemed to strangle, but I did not perish.

"The fluid was mysteriously expelled from me. I breathed as freely of the water as a moment before I had breathed of the air! A weight was lifted from my brain, which had before been crushing it, and my temples grew suddenly cool. A spiracle had developed at the apex of my cranium, and I exuded water through a cavity or 'blow-hole' in the top of my head, like the cetacea around me!"

The naturalist here paused and ran his hand through his hair. The shining something among his gray locks revealed itself as a plate of silver, circular in shape, covering what had evidently been an opening in the skull. He looked less like a man than ever, and when, consulting a glutinous old chronometer, like a jellyfish, he found that his hour was passing, he begged so earnestly to be allowed to finish his "Introduction," that I gave him leave. A boy coming in with copy so frightened him, however, that I thought he was going to turn upon his stomach, and swim away through the window.

"I became sensible directly of three organic changes: my heels clave together, my feet flattened, and my toes turned out, like a caudal fin; my integument grew thick and hard, and my blood thin and chill. But these conditions being novel to me, and my fears only equalled by my wonder as yet, I was paralyzed, and continued to sink. I had descended about one hundred fathoms, and was experiencing a strange oppression, as of the forcing together of my bones, when I heard a sonorous voice close below me say! 'If you go any deeper, you will sustain a pressure of twenty atmospheres, and may not get back at all.'"

I looked beneath, and to my horror a huge whale was coming upward with extended jaws. His half-human eyes were turned benignantly upon me; but he was evidently in pain, and from a point in his back, where a broken harpoon still remained, gouts of blood curdled upward, coloring the water. His vocal power lay in his spiracle, and he said again:

"'I should have been asphyxiated in five minutes.'

"'Who is it that speaks?' I faltered. 'Leviathan, king of the sea, be merciful!'

"'I am called New England Tom by the creatures of the upper element,' answered the whale, 'although falsely thought to be of the family of the Spermaceti; but though my exploits have recommended me to my species, I am not equal to the high title you have given me. That is possessed by you and our sovereign Jonah only!'

"The conviction rushed upon me that I had, indeed, 'dominion over the fish'!

"'I have suffered this wound for your majesty's sake,' said the whale again; 'for I had been deputed to wait in this latitude for your arrival, and convey you to our sovereign. But though I am now in the third century of my age, I can survive a dozen such prickings, and if I chose could shiver the Crimson Dragon with a blow of my tail, as in 1804 I stove the Essex, and made driftwood of her spars.'

"In an instant I was seated within the mighty maw of this famous monster. His jaw-bones were forty feet in length; the roof of his mouth was fifteen feet high, and formed of a spacious arch of 'balleen,' or whale-bone. His crescent-shaped tail, thirty-five feet from tip to tip, swept the depths twice or thrice; and when we emerged into the air, the blood spouted from his pores, and he threw cataracts of water through his spiracle. I saw the Crimson Dragon some miles away, but there were no traces of her boats. The crews of the launches were fathoms deep in the ocean!

"I passed the cape of Greenland, rounded the base of Mount Hecla, and was escorted to the abode of the king of the cetacea by a multitude of his subjects. A submarine island, forty fathoms from the surface, had been occupied three thousand years by this venerable person. He came out to meet me upon the back of a mighty 'rorqual,' and a body-guard of four hundred picked narwhals swam before him. Fifty white whales surrounded their monarch, and a host of dolphins, grampuses, and porpoises brought up the rear. Banners of dyed seal-skin bore his arms—three gourds, argent, upon a field vert; and with these were carried as trophies the wrecks of ships, including the identical shallop whence he was expelled on the voyage to Tarshish. But, marvellous beyond all, the 'great fish' (falsely so translated, since no cetaceous creature can be denominated a fish) into which he was received still lived, and accompanied him. It was now the eldest of the species, but very sprightly, and burdened with dignities. The Seer-King saluted gravely, and gave me a draught of spirits, distilled from the fronds of a rare sea-tangle. His long tenure in the deep had obliterated much of the similitude to man, but his memory of terrestrial matters was extraordinary. The weeds were wrapped about his head after the manner of a crown, and he carried a sceptre of walrus tusk. He told me that his original three days' experience under the sea had so cooled his blood, that the suns of Nineveh parched him, and he had cried for cooling water. I informed him that Nineveh no longer existed, at which he was gratified beyond measure; for his only knowledge of events happening on the earth had been derived from the wrecks which had sunk into his domain. I found that he was badly informed upon matters of science, and he heard my theories of harmonizing the universes with impatience. In his days, he said, no such ideas were broached, and he was indifferent to the intellectual development of his subjects.

"My visit was brief, for, though the palace of Jonah had a sepulchral grandeur about it—a mighty cavern beneath the waves—yet the glittering stalactites which studded the roof, and the cold columns of ice supporting its halls, nearly froze me, and at length I made ready to depart.

"An escort of 'thrashers,' or grampuses, accompanied me. The Seer-King would have detached a cohort of white whales, but the animosity of my tribes might have provoked combat. I left the cetacea with some foreboding. They were allied in some degree to man; they were capable of some human impressions; their blood was warm like mine; they breathed with lungs; they had double hearts; and nourished kindness for their offspring. But I was now about to be delivered over to the cold, cruel, gluttonous tribes of the fish. The family of sharks received me. They could not be counted for multitude. The terrible requiem of the storm—the cannibal white shark—welcomed me with open jaws; the blue shark flung up his caudal for joy; the fox-shark lashed the sea; the northern shark glared through his purblind orbs; the hammer-head dilated his yellow irides; the purple dog-fish made a low purring huzza; and the spotted eyes of the monk-fish glistened with satisfaction. The hound-shark, the basking-shark, and the port-beagle were not less loyal; and these, the most perfectly organized of my cartilaginous tribes, handed me over to the deep-swimming Norwegian 'sea-rat.' Thus I kept steadily southward, the water growing warmer hour by hour, now riding on the serrated snouts of saw-fishes, now moving in the midst of battalions of sword-fish, now acknowledged by the great pike, now vaulting above the surface on the backs of flying-fish, now clinging to the spines of sturgeons, now passing through illimitable shoals of cod, now borne by the swift sea-salmon, now dazzled by the golden scales of the carp, now passing over miles of flat-fish, now hailed by monster conger-eels, now swimming down files of leering hippocampuses, now received by congregations of staid aldermanic lobsters. The torpedo telegraphed my coming to the tribes before, and at last I reached my abode, on the line of the equator, in mid-Atlantic.

"The magnitude and beauty of my court no mind can realize. A truncated cone of granitic rock, whose base extended to the profoundest depths of the sea—even to the region of perpetual fire—formed with its upper plane a circular lagoon at the surface of the ocean. Geysers or volcanoes of fresh water gurgled up through the centre of this palace, and vast submarine groves, intermixed with meadows, extended for leagues along its sides. My household consisted entirely of silver and golden carp, but my guards were of the loyal and gentle, yet courageous and powerful xiphias (sword-fish). These barred the unlicensed ingress of my subjects, and if the adventurous foot of man should profane my lagoon, I could close its inlet and cover it with floods. The dim aisles of the waters were full of wonderful lights: combinations of colors, unknown above, were here developed in gigantic fuci, around whose boles the scarlet tangle climbed, and parasites of purple and emerald played upon their rinds. Some of these forests pointed upward toward the sun; some grew downward, deriving light and heat from the incandescent gulfs. My state apartments were built of coral, in wondrous architecture, and trumpet-weed clothed their battlements. Some cavernous recesses were lit with constellations of shining zoophytes, and there were floors of pearl, studded with diamonds. I could stroll through marvellous arch-ways, gathering jewels at every step, or wander in my royal meadows, among the wrecks and spoils of hurricanes; or rising through the mellow depths, sit among the palms of the lagoon, watching the white sails of ships or studying the awfulness of the storm.

"For a time I secluded myself, theorizing upon the policy of my government. My dominions were vast and venerable; they comprehended two thirds of the surface of the globe; no deluges had destroyed them, and they had been peopled ages before the coming of man. Life here inhabited forms, vegetable and animal, to which the greatest terrestrials were puny. But the darkness which of old rested on the face of the deep, now shadowed its depths. There was no mind here. These gigantic beings were shapes without souls. How should I reason with creatures who could not feel, whose heads could not know till to-morrow that their members had been severed to-day—some of whom, in a single moment, passed their whole existences, and fulfilled all the functions of eating, drinking, and generating—who were not only incapable of thoughts, affections, and emotions, but who could not see, smell, hear, taste, or touch? But such subjects are among the afflictions of all wise rulers, and I resolved to conclude upon nothing till I had visited every part of my dominions.

"During three years of travel I classified the fishes anew, all previous enumeration being paltry, and made the notes and queries which form the staple of my manuscript. I found fresh-water creatures to which the sheat-fish would be a morsel, and hydras to which the fabled sea-serpent would be a worm. I ascended the rivers with the salmon, and fathomed the motives of the climbing-perch. I heard the narrative of a siluris tossed out of a volcano, and talked with a haddock which produced at a birth more young than there are men upon the globe. I have noted the harlequin-angler, which lived three weeks in Amsterdam, hopping about on his fins like a toad; the sucking-fish which adhered to Marc Antony's galley and held it fast; the horned-fish (fil en dos) which the savages discard from their nets in terror and prayer; and the sprats which rise with vapors into the clouds, and are rained back into the sea. I have collected the traditions of many of these beings, and have translated some of their ballads. There is music under the ocean; but most of the fishes sing with their fins, beating the water to rude measures. Among the traditions of all the tribes is that of a time when the waters were peaceful and the fishes happy, when none were rapacious, when death was unknown, when no storms lashed the ripples into billows, and when beings of the upper air bathed at the surface, and the fishes rendered them homage. But some foul deed of which the finny folk were guiltless brought confusion into the waters; the ocean covered all the globe, corpses sank into the depths and were devoured, nets were let down from above, strange fires were kindled beneath, and whirlpools, water-spouts, storms, and volcanoes began.

"I devoted a fourth year to perfecting my system of organic communication, and made some advance toward developing life in inorganic matter. From this latter attainment it would be but a step to perpetuate life, and I should thus restore immortality to man. But the shark family having threatened to revolt, I left off my investigations for some months, and organized a military force, with which I massacred the malcontents till my subjects swam in blood. Returning victoriously at the head of my legions, a sad incident occurred. A ship was crossing our line of march, and I had an unaccountable curiosity to hear something of terrestrial affairs. Five sawfish, at my bidding, staved in the ship's bottom, and she sank almost instantly. The corpses of the drowned drifted slowly down, and as I passed among them, turning up the faces, I recognized in one the features of my mother!

"After a season of remorse I continued my investigations, but a novel and unexpected discovery deranged my plans, and wrought a change in my destiny.

"The subtlest forms of matter, as commonly known, are the imponderables—light, heat, magnetism, and electricity. I had concluded that these were manifestations of some still subtler form, and that this was life, beyond which lay the ethereal elements (called principles) of mind and soul—soul being ultimate and eternal. To demonstrate this I resolved to descend as far as possible into the depths of the sea, and examine the beings which dwelt in the remotest darkness. The conical shape of my island allowed me to descend within its shelving interior, and yet sustain no great atmospheric pressure. I selected a sturgeon, whose body was so powerfully plated that he could not be crushed, and his long-pointed shape gave him great facility for penetrating dense waters. I attached a phosphorescent light to his caudal, that I might not lose him in the gloom, and he preceded me along the sloping interior. We passed the foundations of my court, bade adieu to the deep-swimming hydras, left the profoundest polypi behind, and came at length to uninhabited regions, three thousand fathoms below the surface. My pioneer here suffered great inconvenience, and only by the most vigorous efforts was able to progress at all. The blackness was literally tangible, and our lantern, at most, only 'darkness visible.' By threat and persuasion I forced him forward, hardly able to make headway myself. He swept the almost solid element with his powerful tail, depressed his sharp snout, sucked a long breath, and we darted forward simultaneously. There was a cracking as of bones forced together, and my cranium seemed to split. We shot out of the density into lighter water, and the momentum carried us fifty fathoms beyond!

"We had passed out of the limit of solar attraction, and were being drawn toward the centre of the earth!

"Before, we had been descending; now, we were rising. The fluid grew rarer and warmer as we proceeded, the darkness more luminous, and at last we became visible to each other, swimming in a ruby and transparent liquid, unlike any aspect or part of our native domain. The fluid became so rare finally, that the sturgeon was unable to go farther, kept down by his superior gravity. Some lights glimmering above us, and some mysterious sounds alarming him, he turned and fled. I was left alone.

"I reached the surface of this peaceful sea. A scene lay before me more beautiful than any wonder of the deep. I knew that I was among immortals, and that this was 'Happy Archipelago'!

"The surface was calm. Some purple islets were sprinkled here and there, and creatures marvellously fair were basking in the roseate waters. They looked like angels half way out of heaven. Their faces were of a silvery hue; their hairs shone on the stream like tremulous beams of light; their eyes were of a tender azure, and their bosoms rose and fell as if they were all dreaming of blessedness. Some strains of ravishing harmony that were floating among the islands ceased when I appeared, and I thought I heard the snapping of a lute-string. All the spirits started at once. They were crescent-shaped, and stood upon their nether tips. A star upon their foreheads shone like a pure diamond. They saw me and vanished!

"All but one! She was the fairest of the spirits, and looked, thus frightened, like the pale new moon. The violet veins faded from her lids, and her blue eyes were full of wonder. I felt as if, for the first time, a sinless being had looked upon me, and my heart grew so black and heavy that I sank a little way. I feared to breathe, for she might vanish. I wished to lie forever with her face shining upon me. What were science, and dominion, and the secret of man's immortality to one pure glance like hers? In the agony of my soul I spoke: 'Spirit! Immortal! Woman! O stay! Speak to me!'

"'Who are you? Whence do you come? You are not of us, nor of our element.'

"The voice was like a disembodied sound, coming from nothing, floating in space eternally.

"'I am a creature of a cursed race—ruler of a blighted domain—a realm filled with violence: it lies beneath you.'

"The pale face grew tender; the star on the forehead grew dim, like a tearful eye. She pitied me.

"'There are beings above us,' she said, 'winged beings, that talk with us sometimes; but nothing below. Are they sorrowful as you are? Are their brows all heavy with sadness like yours? Why are they unhappy?'

"I wept and moaned.

"'They have not your pure eyes; they cannot hear your voice. They have sinned.'

"She glided toward me. I felt my gray hairs dropping one by one; my heavy heart grew light; my groans softened to sighs.

"A shape came suddenly between us.

"I knew the long green locks, and the glossy neck. It was Tethys who spoke. 'Man,' she said, 'you were made one of us, not one of these. Go back to your domain, for you are mortal. Resume dominion over the fish, or, striving to win more, lose all!'

"I turned my face seaward bitterly. I looked back once; the blue eyes were gleaming—oh, so tenderly!—and I could not go. I muttered an execration at my bitter fate. Straightway the sky rocked, the sea rose, the pale star vanished. I had spoken a wicked word.

"I was consigned to Euripius, the divinity of whirlpools. In vain I struggled in his watery arms; the swift current bore me circling away, and finally whirled me with frightful velocity. My feet were shaken asunder, my integument softened, my brain reeled. I was passed from eddy to eddy; I became drunken with emotion; I suffered all the tortures of the lost. A waterspout lifted me from the clutch of the sea, and deposited me upon the dry land, close to the home of my infancy.

"I have passed the weary hours of my penance in arranging the memoirs which follow. Science has again wooed me with her allurements; the stars continue their correspondence. I have not despaired of the great secret of immortality; and though these hairs are few and white, I shall be rejuvenated in the tranquil depths of the water, and reassert for ages my rightful dominion over the fish!"

I was in doubt whether to laugh or wonder when the Ancient Mariner concluded; but I was relieved from passing judgment upon his article by the unceremonious entrance of a tall, lithe, gray-eyed person, who wore gold seals and carried a thick walking-stick. The naturalist appeared to be bent on diving through the floor, and swimming away through the cellar; but he caught the stern, keen eye of the stranger and cowered. The tall man lifted his cane, and struck the manuscript out of his Highness's hands; he demolished the microscope at a blow, and flung the geological hammer out of the window.

"Come along," he said. "No! drop that trash—every article of it, or else you'll be experimenting again. Come along!"

They went away together, leaving my office littered with broken glass and sea-shells. With some astonishment I followed through the warehouse to the street; they had entered a carriage and were driving rapidly away. The next morning's paper explained the whole occurrence in the following paragraph:

"Much Learning hath made him mad.—Yesterday noon an elderly lunatic, named Robert Jones, committed suicide by leaping over the parapet of London Bridge. He was in the custody at the time of Dr. Stretveskit, the celebrated keeper of the Asylum for Monomaniacs. He had been at large some days, and was traced to several publishing-houses, whither he had gone to contrive the publication of some insane vagaries. He was finally overhauled at the office of Spry, Stromboli & Co., and placed in a carriage; but seizing a favorable moment when travel was impeded upon the bridge, he burst through the glass door and cleared the parapet at a bound. Jones was an adventurous and dangerous character. Some years ago he set fire to the Shrimpshire Asylum, where his family had confined him, and went abroad upon a whale-ship; but meeting with an accident, he underwent the process of trepanning and came home more crazy than before. At one time he attempted to drown his mother, in furtherance of some strange experiment; but it was thought at the date of his death that he was recovering his wits. Among his delusions was a strange one—that he had been made viceroy over all the fishes. His body has not been recovered."

I read the last sentence with a thrill. My late visitor might even now be presiding at some finny council; and as I should have occasion to cross the sea some day, an untimely shipwreck might place me in closer relations with him. I determined, therefore, to print the manuscript which remained in my hands. May it appease his Mightiness, the King of the Fishes!