But, what is this strangely shaped vessel, which lies anchored stem and stern in the centre of the stream, and bearing a flag covered over with characters which as we pass look like hieroglyphics? The barge which marks the Tunnel. We are now moving above the World's Wonder! A thousand men, women, and children, have marched under that barge's keel since morning; lamps are burning fifty feet under water, human beings are breathing, where nothing but the bones of a mammoth ever lay before, and check-takers are rattling pence, where the sound of coin was never heard since the days of the original Chaos.
What a field for theory! What a subject for a fashionable Lecturer! What a topic for the gossipry of itinerant science, telling us (on its own infallible authority) how the globe has been patched up for us, the degenerated and late-born sons of Adam! How glowingly might their fancy lucubrate on the history of the prior and primitive races which may now be perforating the interior strata of the globe--working by their own gas-light, manufacturing their own metals, and, from their want of the Davy-lamp, (and of an Act of Parliament, to make it burn,) producing those explosions which _we_ call earthquakes, while our volcanoes are merely the tops of their chimneys!
Genii of the Diving-bell! Sing Sir Is-mb-rt Br-n-l, Whether ye parboil in steam, Whether float in lightning's beam, Whether in the Champs Elysés Dance ye, like Carlotta Grisi. Take your trumps, the fame to swell, Of Sir Is-mb-rt Br-n-l.
Phantoms of the fiery crown! Plunged ten thousand fathoms down In the deep Pacific's wave, In the Ocean's central cave, Where the infant earthquakes sleep, Where the young tornadoes creep. Chant the praise, where'er ye dwell, Of Sir Is-mb-rt Br-n-l.
What, if Green's Nassau balloon (Ere its voyage to the moon) 'Twixt Vauxhall and Stepney plies, Straining London's million eyes, Dropping on the breezes bland, (Good for gazers,) bags of sand; Green's a blacksmith to a belle, To Sir Is-mb-rt Br-n-l.
Great magician of the Tunnel! Earth bows down before thy funnel, Darting on through swamp and crag, Faster than a Gaul can brag; All Newmarket's tip-top speed, To thy stud is broken-knee'd; Zephyr spavin'd, lightning slow, To thy fiery rush below.