He is followed about by a little dog—a little ugly dog—of which he and Madame Von Speck are outrageously fond; although, between ourselves, the animal's back is provided with no more tail than a cannon-ball.
"THIS NIGHT VAUXHALL WILL CLOSE FOR EVER!"
(BY LAMAN BLANCHARD.)
These were the words—or rather, this was the line of heartbreaking octosyllabic verse—that met the gaze of the living on every dead wall of the metropolis. They stared at me from the newspapers, they glared on me from the shoulders of perambulating board-men, they rang in my ears everywhere—Vauxhall will close for ever! Had it been the "Pyramids to be sold by auction, by George Robins," or "the positively last fall of the Falls of Niagara;"—had it been the "final extinction of Mount Etna," or "the Moon shining for this night only, after which it will be disposed of to cheesemongers, by sale of candle, or private contract," my spirit had been comparatively untroubled;—but Vauxhall!
Truly does our great Wordsworth tell us that there are thoughts which lie too deep for tears. I cannot cry, though this be a crying evil; my pen must weep its ink-drops over the event.
Had a dozen Union-workhouses been erected on Epsom downs, or a national school supplanted the grand stand at Doncaster. Had the Bank of England itself been turned into alms-houses, or the Royal Academy announced the last day of drawing—these, and millions of such minor evils, I could well have borne. Some substitute for the departed might yet have been discovered. Were there no bread, cheap or dear, at home or abroad, and all the bakers above-ground had burnt themselves to cinders in their own ovens, still could we have gone to the pastry-cook's for comfort, and have eaten buns. But the Royal Gardens shut!—closed for ever!—hammered down!—the light put out, which no Promethean lampman can relume! Where should Othello go?
"The days of my youth," I exclaimed aloud, as I wandered sorrowfully through the brilliant avenues of the doomed garden on the last night—"the days of my youth, where are they?" and an echo answered, "Here we are!" And there they are indeed, buried for ever in dark Vauxhall, knocked down as part of the fixtures, swept away with broken lamps and glasses, with the picked bones of vanished chickens, and the crumbs of French rolls that are past.
To have visited Vauxhall, like bricks, for so many years, only to find bricks and Vauxhall becoming one!