Short, however, is the duration of this scene. Retreating into another walk, out of the way of the reeling revellers, I obtained a new view of the yet famed and once fashionable gardens; and now, methought, their glory was indeed departed. The place, which before was brighter than the day, seemed the temple of Twilight. The most brilliant lamp it boasted shed but a miserable dimness round. The genius of Vauxhall was in the position of Damocles--only, instead of the sword it was a hammer that was suspended over her. Nothing flourished there but the universal enemy--Decay. The gardens seemed to hold a place between Earth and the Eternal Shades. The words "Darkness Visible," formed the most conspicuous object,--the letters, of an enormous size, were composed of grey and black lamps, which the rain, descending in torrents, was fast putting out. A transparency, representing Melancholy playing the bagpipes, had a very striking and sombre effect; and another exhibition of a fountain that had ceased playing, with a pair of black swans floating in the puddle beneath, proved truly attractive to the few low-spirited stragglers that remained. A beautiful dioramic view of the Elysian fields, brilliantly illuminated, drew my attention; but on going to look, I saw nothing but a few acres of gloomy waste land, with a board, displaying the notice, "This ground to let on building leases." The farce performed in the rotunda was "Blue Devils," at some of the scenes in which the audience were quite broken-hearted, and the actors were called for amidst general sobs. In the orchestra, the muffled drum was extremely admired; the violins, reduced to one string, crumbled under the hands of the players like touchwood, otherwise their notes would have been highly dispiriting; the larger instruments spoke in hollow murmurs; the flutes gave forth the parting sighs breathed into them by the asthmatic and fading musicians. Ramo Samee, reduced to a nonentity, flung the balls up without even an effort to catch them, and the sword, like Macbeth's amen, "stuck in his throat." One "swallow" would have been a summer to him. The waiters went about with umbrellas and lanterns to collect orders. Through their threadbare, meagre, fleecy habiliments--coats of Scotch mist, and continuations of London fog--might be traced their thin and fleshless forms. Something sharper than penury had worn them to the bones--the sense that their occupation was gone. They shuffled from walk to walk, from box to box, carrying broken plates with faint impressions of various delicacies; semi-sandwiches were on some, and on others were exhibited narrow slices of transparent and shadowy ham. The soda-water they brought had caught the hue of the bottles, and it trickled forth in showers of tears. The sparkling champagne was perfectly still; the very punch was "drowned" in the bowl, spiritless and stagnant. The chicken looked as if it had been deposited for the last few years in the mummy-room of the