DEATH OF THE SEASON.
HAD the Gods made us poetical, we should now write an elegy upon the departed season. 'Lummox sung the Seasons ; but we speak of "the season of the seasons," .as the almanack-venders have it. What a solitude is the town! Hyde Park is a desert, Kensington 'Gardens a wilderness. The echoes of a solitary horse- man startle the ear of the melancholy street-pacer. He looks up at the palace-like residences, and closed shutters meet his eye ; or a lingering old porter—" the last man" — sits in his coffin- thair in the open vacant hall. The neighbourhood of Belgrave 'Square seems " one vast city of the dead ;" its stuccoed edifices nothing better than "whited sepulchres." Every square is a Idank. The Club-houses, half-lighted up at night, Show as great Chinese lanterns expiring. The disconsolate newsman raises in hopelessness his feeble cry of " News !" that travels round the speak of "the season of the seasons," .as the almanack-venders have it. What a solitude is the town! Hyde Park is a desert, Kensington 'Gardens a wilderness. The echoes of a solitary horse- man startle the ear of the melancholy street-pacer. He looks up at the palace-like residences, and closed shutters meet his eye ; or a lingering old porter—" the last man" — sits in his coffin- thair in the open vacant hall. The neighbourhood of Belgrave 'Square seems " one vast city of the dead ;" its stuccoed edifices nothing better than "whited sepulchres." Every square is a Idank. The Club-houses, half-lighted up at night, Show as great Chinese lanterns expiring. The disconsolate newsman raises in hopelessness his feeble cry of " News !" that travels round the world for very vacancy... . - The last Levee has been held. The Parliament is up. The Speaker is no more. The Chancellor's Court, the most popular lounge of the day, is closed. The Opera is become matter for his- tory. PAGANIIII has waved his farewell bow : the last flight of his staccato notes yet ring in our cars, and the wailing of his har- monics sounds like the dirge of the musical world. TAGLIONI is fled: like Hope's, "her feet are last in heaven," but their twink- ling steps have vanished "as the far-shooting star." Sights and shows are not. Every exhibition-room has closed its doors, save where, in Pall Mall, the Old Painters have mustered their works, as in scorn of the moderns, who are scattered all over the country, gleaning the bright field of nature. The horsemen of Rotten Row are gone to Goodwood. The Country is now the Town. All the splendid patrician "homes of England" are alive with gayety. Melton gives the note of preparation. The moors are familiar with the sounds of double-barrelled Mantons (duly pro- vided, we hope, with our excellent friend SOMERVILLE'S most phi- lanthropical Safety-locks). They have been getting up fetes at the Surry Zoological Gar- dens, and at Vauxhall, and encampments at Windsor. Grievous it is to record, that the last, with all the pomp and circumstance of military and royal splendour, proved a failure : the Guards looked Ashamed, and the spectators were disappointed : the whole affair, -notwithstanding the brilliant anticipation of our own Penny-a- , line-man, terminated in smoke.
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