I have before me an account of an evening spent at Vauxhall about this time by an eminent drysalter of the City, his partner, a certain Tom, and two ladies, the drysalter’s wife and his daughter Lydia; ‘a laughter-loving lass of eighteen, who dearly loved a bit of gig.’ Do you know, gentle reader, what is a ‘bit of gig’? This young lady laughs at everything, and cries, ‘What a bit of gig!’ There was singing, of course, and after the singing there were fireworks, and after the fireworks an ascent on the rope. ‘The ascent on the rope, which Lydia had never before witnessed, was to her particularly interesting. For the first time during the evening she looked serious, and as the mingled rays of the moon (then shining gloriously in the dark blue heavens, attended by her twinkling handmaidens, the stars), which ever and anon shot down as the rockets mounted upwards, mocking the mimic pyrotechnia of man, and the flashes of red fire played upon her beautiful white brow and ripe lips--blushing like a cleft cherry--we thought for a moment that Tom was a happy blade. While we were gazing on her fine face, her eye suddenly assumed its wonted levity, and she exclaimed in a laughing tone--“Now, if the twopenny postman of the rockets were to mistake one of the directions and deliver it among the crowd so as to set fire to six or seven muslin dresses, what a bit of gig it would be!”’ Another delightful place was the Surrey Zoological Gardens, which occupied fifteen acres, and had a large lake in the middle, very useful for fireworks and the showing off of the Mount Vesuvius they stuck up on one side of it. The carnivorous animals were kept in a single building, under a great glazed cupola, but the elephants, bears, monkeys, &c., had separate buildings of their own. Flower shows, balloon ascents, fireworks, and all kinds of exciting things went on at the Surrey Zoo. The Art Galleries opened every year, and, besides the National Gallery, there were the Society of British Artists, the Exhibition of Water Colours, and the British Institution in Pall Mall. At the Royal Academy of 1837, Turner exhibited his ‘Juliet,’ Etty a ‘Psyche and Venus,’ Landseer a ‘Scene in Chillingham Park,’ Wilkie the ‘Peep o’ Day Boy’s Cabin,’ and Roberts the ‘Chapel of Ferdinand and Isabella at Granada.’ There were Billiard Rooms, where a young man from the country who prided himself upon his play could get very prettily handled. There were Cigar Divans, but as yet only one or two, for the smoking of cigars was a comparatively new thing--in fact, one who wrote in the year 1829 thought it necessary to lay down twelve solemn rules for the right smoking of a cigar; there were also Gambling Hells, of which more anon.