OR, GLIMPSES BEITEATH THE WATEES. 



great modern nations of the west, the sight of these 

 wonderful creatures is but quite a recent gratifica- 

 tion. It only remained to the ancients to have ex-- 

 hibited a Titanic Aquarium, to render our triumph 

 oyer their labours in the field of popular natural 

 history impossible. Had but a Roman Warrington 

 or Gosse developed the germ of such an idea, and 

 an Osier existed to furnish the glass — the Pompey, 

 or Caesar, or Crassus, would not have been wanting 

 to feast the eyes, both of patrician and plebeian 

 Rome, with an Aquarium measuring hundreds of 

 feet in length, in which the monsters of the deep 

 would have been exhibited in deadly conflict, and 

 human divers, armed with net and trident, like the 

 retiarise of their gladiatorial combats, would have 

 encountered, beneath the waters, the Shark, the 

 •Whale, or the Torpedo, to the shouts of crowded 

 circuses, the centre of which would have been a 

 glass-walled ocean. 



But a gigantic Aquarium is, fortunately, a feat 

 that yet remains for modern science to achieve, 

 and which it will doubtless accomplish. The day 

 will arrive when we shall see the living Behemoth — 

 the Titan of the deep— rolling majestic in waves of 

 his native element, perhaps pursued by his cruel 



enemy the Sword-Pish, or harried by a shoal of Her- 



111 



