VAUXHALL.
Tuts once fashionable place of entertainment manifests a stronger spirit of vitality in its expiring throes than those who have observed the depressed and languid condition of its later years could have anticipated. We have lost count of the " last nights" again and again prognosticated by the physicians who watch over its deathbed. But no medicine can confer immortality, and we fear its real last night actually took place on Wednesday last. The old place re• solved to "die game "—to go off with eclat. On that occasion, we were previously informed by the advertisements, "The courageous Signora Rossini will make her nerveless ascent." Surely the shade of poor SIMPSON has been permitted to " revisit the glimpses of the moon" to act as master of ceremonies and usher in the scene of his glory to the regions of the unsubstantial past. Nor was this all: "M. D'Ernst pledges himself to produce a grand feu d'artifw,s that shall insure a lasting memorial of the pyrotechnic splendour for which this establishment has been so long celebrated." A last- ing memorial! did the man intend to set London on fire, and get himself erected into a monument ? If so, " he comes an age too late," for the days of hanging in chains are past for ever. Unfortunate M. D'Etussr ! the most dazzling pyrotechnic splendour burns out : succeeding generations will be as unable to imagine the linea- ments of your flames as the present is to conceive the changes of GARRICK'S countenance. Rest contented! The " Cynthia of the minute" has passed away and left no trace behind al- though POPE dipped his brush in the colours of the rainbow to immortalize her ; and your fireworks too must share the common doom—" all that's bright must fade." Be contented that to you it has been given to kindle the funereal pyre of Vauxhall. Yes, that fairy spot, which PEPYS commemorated as "the new Spring Garden "—which was visited by Sir Roger de Coverley—where HORACE WALPOLE and Lady CAROLINE PETERSHAM frolicked it till the vulgarians gathered round to wonder at fashionable auda- city—where the happiness of Amelia's little party was dispersed by foppish insolence—where FITZGERALD was baffled in his attempt to run away with MARY Rotor/son, (in which had he succeeded, we might have been deprived of the interlude of " Perdita and Flo- rizel," with the heir of the monarchy enacting the hero of the piece)—theNauxball illustrated by Roumersc, Hoosier's, and ARNE, is about to become one of the things that have been. We would not prolong its life if we could. Its memory will live for ever in the pages of ADDISON, FIELDING, and HORACE WALPOLE; and new Vauxhalls with new names will spring up to delight the children grown and ungrown of this and succeeding generations. Is there not the Surrey Zoological with its mighty blaze ? But oh, ye builders, to whom it is given to disfigure the area of Vauxhall with your brick and mortar, spare as many of the trees as your innate bad taste will allow you.
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