|THUS sings one of Sylvanus Urban's poets, describing the pleasures of Spring in the London of George the Second. In the epithet 'happier'--an epithet probably suggested by the not very profound observation that the middle classes as a rule took their pleasure less sadly than mere persons of quality--there is 'the least little touch of spleen.' But the social distinction implied between the fashionable gardens on the Surrey side of the water and the more popular place of entertainment from which the tired dyer and his melting wife are trudging wearily in Hogarth's 'Evening' is practically preserved in the advertisements to be found, between May and August, in the newspapers of the time. Sadler's Wells is specific in its attractions,--its burletta or its rope-dancer: Vauxhall, on the contrary, with a disdainful reticence,--a _superbia quosita mentis_ befitting the 'genuine and only Jarley,'--shortly sets forth that its 'Evening Entertainments' will begin on such a date; that the price of admission is one shilling; and that the doors will open at five. After this notification it continued, at rare intervals, to repeat that the gardens were at the service of the public; but made no more definite sign. Obviously the thing to do was to go. With the help of a few old pamphlets and descriptions, it is proposed to invite the reader to make that expedition, and to revive, if it may be, some memory of a place, the traces of which are strewn broadcast over the literature of the last century. It is true that Vauxhall Gardens survived to a date much later than this. But it was Vauxhall 'with a difference,' and the Vauxhall here intended is Vauxhall in its prime, between 1750 and 1790,--the Vauxhall of Horace Walpole and the 'Connoisseur,'--of Beau Tibbs and the pawnbroker's widow,--of Fielding's 'Amelia' and Fanny Burney's 'Evelina.'