Some of the melancholy duties of this life afford a more subdued, and, therefore, a more satisfactory pleasure than scores with which duty has nothing to do, or those of mere enjoyment. If, for instance, the friend, whose feeds we have helped to eat, whose cellars we have done our part to empty for the last quarter of a century, should happen to fall ill; if the doctors shake their heads, and warn us to make haste to his bedside, there is always a large proportion of honey to be extracted, in obeying the summons, out of the sting of parting, recounting old reminiscences, and gossipping about old times, never, alas! to return. But should we neglect the summons, where would the stings of conscience end? Impelled by such a sense of duty, we wended our way to the "royal property," 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 reflect 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 entree, and cavalcade of Amazons." They had no sympathy with the decline and fall of the _Simpsonian_ 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.