my opinion of him to the whole class to which he belongs."

It is strange--and illustrative of the occasional perversity of human
reasoning--that Mr Hazlit did not perceive that he himself had given
the diver cause to judge him, Mr Hazlit, very harshly, and the worst of
it was that Maxwell _did_, in his wrath, extend his opinion of the
merchant to the entire class to which he belonged, expressing a deep
undertoned hope that the "whole bilin' of 'em" might end their days in a
place where he spent many of his own, namely, at the bottom of the sea.
It is to be presumed that he wished them to be there without the benefit
of diving-dresses!

"It is curious, however," continued Mr Hazlit, "that I had been
thinking this very morning about making inquiries after a diver, one
whom I have frequently heard spoken of as an exceedingly able and
respectable man--Balding or Bolding or some such name, I think."

"Oh! Baldwin, Joe Baldwin, as his intimate friends call him," said
Aileen eagerly. "I know him well; he is in my district."

"What!" exclaimed Mr Hazlit, "not one of your paupers?"

Aileen burst into a merry laugh. "No, papa, no; not a pauper certainly.
He's a well-off diver, and a Wesleyan--a local preacher, I believe--but
he lives in my district, and is one of the most zealous labourers in it.
Oh! If you saw him, papa, with his large burly frame and his rough
bronzed kindly face, and broad shoulders, and deep bass voice and hearty
laugh."

The word suggested the act, for Aileen went off again at the bare idea
of Joe Baldwin being a pauper--one at whose feet, she said, she
delighted to sit and learn.

"Well, I'm glad to have such a good account of him from one so well able
to judge," rejoined her father, "and as I mean to go visit him without
delay I'll be obliged if you'll give me his address."

Having received it, the merchant sallied forth into those regions of the
town where, albeit she was not a guardian of the poor, his daughter's
light figure was a much more familiar object than his own.

"Does a diver named Baldwin live here?" asked Mr Hazlit of a figure
which he found standing in a doorway near the end of a narrow passage.

The figure was hazy and indistinct by reason of the heavy wreaths of
tobacco-smoke wherewith it was enveloped.

"Yis, sur," replied the figure; "he lives in the door it the other ind
o' the passage. It's not over-light here, sur; mind yer feet as ye go,
an' pay attintion to your h