Vauxhall, immediately opposite the great prison which Bentham designed as a model penitentiary, at a time when such experiments were in vogue, has some attractive memories, if only on account of the famous Gardens, which the members of the youthful generation know not, but which their elders bear in genial memory; and when we get to Lambeth, of which Vauxhall is only a precinct, we are on memorial ground indeed. Lambeth is so large a place (its circumference is said to be about sixteen miles) that in 1846 it was subdivided into four parishes; but the most interesting part is that which borders on the river. A certain indescribable quaintness--a dusky hue of tradition and romance--hangs about the neighbourhood. The very name is of unknown etymology, and has a sort of Hebrew sound, though it is probably Anglo-Saxon in some corrupted form. In earlier times, the suburb, as we read in an old account, was celebrated for "astrologers and almanack-makers"--much the same kind of people in days when men believed in the influences of the stars. Francis Moore ("Old Moore," whose Prophetic Almanack still finds readers) was a dweller in Lambeth; and so, likewise, was Simon Forman, who was connected with the mysterious murder of Sir Thomas Overbury in 1613. Lambeth, moreover, has an ancient reputation for unusual crimes. In 1041--a sufficiently remote date for that fascinating twilight in which it is not easy to discriminate between fact and fiction--the Danish King, Hardicanute, died suddenly in Lambeth, at a banquet given on account of some great lord's marriage. By many it was supposed that he had been poisoned; but it is perhaps more probable that he succumbed to a stroke of apoplexy or paralysis, induced by excessive gluttony. Less open to question is the narrative of a stupendous crime committed in 1531 by a cook in the service of Dr. Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, who had a palace near the archiepiscopal residence. According to Holinshed, the cook threw some poison into a vessel of yeast, and thus not merely destroyed seventeen persons belonging to the family, but also killed some poor people who were fed at the gate. The conclusion of this horrible story is worthy of the beginning. The offender was boiled to death in Smithfield, in pursuance of a law made for that very case, but repealed in 1547. There may, however, be some doubt as to the proportions of the crime. Stow says that, out of seventeen persons poisoned, only two died. [Illustration: VAUXHALL BRIDGE, FROM NINE ELMS PIER.]