ple affirmed
the fact to be an evidence of the improved state of the metropolis.
(Moralists are too prone to be thankful for small mercies.) Had the fact
been so, the inference was a fallacy; but we need not trouble ourselves
about that, as the fact is otherwise. It is a mistake to suppose that
progress is made only in one direction. Vauxhall is associated with the
fast life of centuries. It was born in the general and fearful
profligacy--the fearful price England paid for the Restoration. In 1661
Evelyn writes of it as a pretty contrived plantation. In 1665, in the
diary of Pepys, we find entries of sundry visits to Fox-hall and the
Spring Gardens, and "of the humours of the citizens pulling off cherries,
and God knows what." Again we are told, "to hear the nightingales and
the birds, and here fiddlers, and there a harp, and here laughing, and
there the people walking, is mighty diverting." That respectable
Secretary of the Admiralty also tells us of supper in an arbour, of
ladies walking with their masks on, and his righteous soul was shocked to
see "how rude some of the young gallants of the town are become," and
"the confidence of the vice of the age." To Vauxhall Addison took Sir
Roger de Coverley, and Goldsmith the Citizen of the World, who exclaimed,
"Head of Confucius, this is fine! this unites rural beauty with courtly
magnificence." Here Fielding's Amelia was enraptured with the extreme
beauty and elegance of the place. Here Miss Burney gathered incidents
for her once popular but now forgotten tales. And here Hogarth, for
suggesting paintings, some of which still remain, was presented with a
perpetual ticket of admission, and which was last used in 1836. Strange
scenes have been done here. One of them is described by Horace Walpole,
who graphically narrates how Lady Caroline Petersham stewed chickens over
a lamp; and how Betty, the fruit girl, supped with them at a side table.
All that is past. Dust and ashes are the fine lords and fine ladies who
made Vauxhall the resort of folly and fashion--the fashion is gone, the
folly remains. Yet never were there more funds subscribed for the
conversion of the Jews, or more missionaries sent out to Timbuctoo.

Vauxhall is one of the delusions of London life. It lives on the past--a
very common practice in this country, where real knowledge travels very
slowly. When Smith comes up to London, his first Sunday he goes to hear
the Rev. Mr. Flummery, thinkin