In these days of Motor Cars, any gossip about their progenitors must be of interest. On 7 Aug., a steam carriage, carrying 16 persons, belonging to the General Steam Company, was tried between the York and Albany, Regent’s Park, and the Manor House at Tottenham—i.e., along the Camden Road to Finsbury Park—doing the distance in rather less than half-an-hour. Another ran on 13 Sep. from Deptford to Sevenoaks, about 21 miles, in 2 hours 37 minutes, but there were small accidents by the way. Later on in the month the first-named carriage performed about Windsor, Frogmore and Dachet, and frequently reached a speed of 18 to 20 miles an hour; and on Oct. 1 it was shown to the Queen and Prince Albert, the latter expressing himself highly pleased with it. It then only did 16 miles an hour. On 9 Sep. Vauxhall Gardens, which had been a place of amusement since the time of Charles I., were sold for £20,000. In _Punch_ of 14 Aug. we find a sad account of a last visit: “Impelled by a sense of duty, we wended our way to the ‘Royal property,’ {169a} to take a last look at the long expiring gardens. It was a wet night—the lamps burnt dimly—the military band played in the minor key—the waiters stalked about with so silent, melancholy a tread, that we took their towels for pocket handkerchiefs; the concert in the open _rain_ went off tamely—dirge-like, in spite of the ‘Siege of Acre,’ which was described in a set of quadrilles, embellished with blue fire and maroons, and adorned with a dozen double drums, thumped at intervals, like death notes, in various parts of the doomed gardens. The _divertissement_ was anything but diverting, when we reflected upon the impending fate of the ‘Rotunda,’ in which it was performed. “No such damp was, however, thrown over the evolutions of ‘Ducrow’s beautiful horses and equestrian _artistes_,’ including the ‘new grand _entrée_ and calvacade of Amazons.’ They had no sympathy with the decline and fall of the _Simpsonian_ {169b} empire. They were strangers, interlopers, called in, like mutes and feathers, to grace the ‘funeral show,’ to give a more graceful flourish to the final exit. The horses pawed the sawdust, evidently unconscious that the earth it covered would soon be ‘let on lease for building ground’; the riders seemed in the hey-day of their equestrian triumph. Let them, however, derive from the fate of Vauxhall a deep, a fearful lesson!—though we shudder as we write, it shall not be said that destruction came upon them unawares—that no warning voice had been raised—that even the squeak of _Punch_ was silent! Let them not sneer, and call us superstitious—we do _not_ give credence to supernatural agency as a fixed and general principle; but we did believe in Simpson, and stake our professional reputation upon Widdicomb! {170a}