where my guide showed me various great and wonderful improvements.

"This bridge," says he, "stands where once that known as Waterloo was erected. It is called the Bridge of Peace, having been built to commemorate the entire abolition of war and the war system, fifty years ago. From this, you will perceive, a wide road planted with groves of trees; this road entirely encircles the metropolis, and with the river terrace forms the noblest evidence of our advance in civilisation. It passes, on the south, through old Smithfield, Finsbury, and Whitechapel; and crossing the river by the Thames Tunnel, another semicircle of like dimensions completes the structure. You will be surprised, no doubt, to see no shipping of any size on the river; but the fact is, our commerce has so greatly increased, that we allow no large craft to come up farther than Woolwich, all merchandise being brought into town by rail, the central terminus being situated where the Fleet Prison once stood, and all the lines branching from it. All these improvements have been effected by the employment of the labour note. Engines have also been invented to travel with ease and without noise on common roads, at about twenty miles an hour, and the new material for railways supersedes the necessity for tram-ways and does not disfigure the streets by the erection of arches. But let us turn city-wise--we still call the region round the Bank the city, par excellence, though London is now at least four times the size it was a hundred years since, and contains about five millions of inhabitants, not one of whom gets his living by beggary!"

Accordingly we bent our steps east-way, and I was further astonished at the width of the streets, and the beauty of the houses, and the number of the inhabitants. "That marble palace," said my conductor, "is the residence of the Lord Mayor, and that noble structure to the right is the Time-note Bank. It stands on the site of the old Bank of England, which was soon found too circumscribed for our increased operations. Let us go in."

46

We passed under a noble archway of white marble, and entered a grand hall of immense dimensions, with ceiling covered with fret-work of the most elegant and cunning workmanship. "Here," said my venerable gnide, are the principal operations of the representative currency carried on. Around the hall you perceive desks for a thousand clerks, each of whom remains six hours at his post, and is then relieved by another. The Bank is open twelve hours a-day: the first six hours being devoted to the issue, and the last six to the transfer, of notes. So simple is the present system, that the very poorest in mental capacity are comparatively rich now-understand its working. Observe now: that young man applies for paper money; he produces his parchments, to which the public valuer has attached his seal, thereby showing that there is a bona fide property for the value, and he obtains notes in exchange. For his ten years' Time note he procures change in notes representing hours, days, and months: he is credited with the ten years, and debited with the one year, and he is now enabled to go home and employ twenty men in some useful occupation. When he disposes of the produce of their labour, he transfers the notes he receives to his own credit; and thus the social machine is kept continually at work, without loss or depreciation of capital. In your time, the same young man having houses or land, and wishing to employ their value, must either have sold or mortgaged his property, possibly at a great loss. Now he retains it in his own hands, reaps the advantage of its possession, and can trade to its extreme value-the profits of his speculations balancing his bank account."

I could not but express my wonder at the simplicity, and yet certain profitable results of the system.

"But come with me into the workshops," said my benevolent friend. With that we entered the vestibule of a large building, from an inner room of which we heard the hum of many voices. We went in, and found ourselves in a large workshop, where a number of young men were at work at lathes and other instruments. Their countenances glowed with the ruddy hue of health, and their looks betokened the presence of plenty and contentment. In the centre of the apartment a fountain was playing, and the water dropped into its reservoir beneath with a pleasant sound. As we entered, one young man exclaimed-"Now it is your turn, Edward!" and with that the other stepped into a kind of elevated seat or rostrum, and began to sing the first verse of a song, in which the others joined in chorus. I inquired of my guide the meaning of this scene, when he explained to me that it was now considered that music sweetens labour, and that the operatives take it in turn to amuse and instruct the others during their work.

"Come

Passing from the house, we encountered a man bearing some cooked meats in a silver dish. hither," said my guide, “and I will show you how the English of the twentieth century conduct their domestic affairs." We entered a private house, and my friend explained to me that which otherwise would have appeared dark and mysterious to my uninformed senses. "One effect of our system," said he, "has been the abolition of domestic servitude; and the cooking and preparing of meals has now become a regular profession. The underground floors of private houses are, as you see, laid out as extensive cooking rooms, in which all the operations of the cuisine are performed by the cook and his staff, according to a regular graduated scale of remuneration. In all houses there are eating and entertainment rooms; and when a person takes a house or apartments, he has nothing more to do than to make arrangements with the professor as to the extent and quality of the meals he requires, and regularly at the hour appointed he finds all the requisites for a meal, large or small as may be ordered, ready for him without further trouble. The same with the decorator and all other domestic officers. You write down in the morning what you require, and at the time appointed, your rooms are decorated, your dinner is prepared, and all domestic offices performed. By this plan the toil of your wife is saved, and the worry and anxiety of housekeeping entirely done away with. In fact," continued the old gentleman, "by the system of a time note currency, we ensure greater punctuality in all our dealings, we are enabled to make use of every improvement in machinery, and we are saved the toil and drudgery of all the coarser kinds of labour. No man requires to work more than from eight to ten hours a day, and the remainder of his time is occupied in amusing and instructing his mind. Every man in his family is perfectly independent of his neighbour, yet one social tie binds all men in one great bond of brotherhood and peace.

While I was expressing my gratification at this intelligence, I noticed several sedate-looking young men passing onwards towards a building of noble dimensions. I left my guide for a minute, and entered the mansion with the rest. I found myself in a hall of large dimensions, hung round with maps and diagrams. In the centre was a table and chair, at which a young man of noble appearance was standing, and all around were raised seats which radiated from the space in the middle, and on which were seated a vast audience. It was the hall of Political Economy, and the intellectual young man was the lecturer. The discourse was just begun, and I listened attentively. "Political Economy," said he, "is a science of an essential character, upon the full understanding of which depends the most beneficial results. It was little understood by our forefathers in the nineteenth century, and their conclusions

musick, vocal and instrumental, not too refined for the general ear, for all of which one shilling is paid; and though last, not least, good eating and drinking for those who choose to purchase the regale."* Fireworks were not exhibited till the year 1798, the prices of admission having been up to 1792, one shilling; they were afterwards raised to four shillings under the management of Messrs. Gye and Hughes; in 1848 they were again lowered to a shilling, and they are now half a-crown, with sundry extras-such as a shilling for admittance to the boxes in the Rotunda, ditto for a raised seat to view the fireworks, &c., &c., &c.

We read in the "Spectator" of Hogarth being engaged as painter, and Roubiliac as sculptor to the gardens; as also a vivid description of the raised walks, ornamental plantations, statues, pictures, music, galleries, flowers, nightingales (!) and other felicities "happily adapted" to the taste of the times; so that Vauxhall a century ago must have been much the same in external appearance as it is now-except in the matter of the flowers and the nightingales; in which last particular the writer in the "Spectator" must have been wrongly informed, or guilty of a little pleasant exaggeration.

The best season ever known was that of 1823, when 133,279 visitors entered the gardens, and £29,590 were taken at the door: the greatest number of persons ever assembled in one night was 20,137, which immense assemblage took place on the 2nd of August, 1833; and the smallest ascertained number assembled was on the 15th of September, 1839, when only 1,089 persons passed the pay-box, one-third of whom were admitted with orders. It must be premised, however, that in all these cases the season began in May and ended in August.

So much for Vauxhall past. But what shall we say of its present, if Fielding, ninety years ago, could only appeal to the knowledge of his readers, and confess himself unable to do justice to the "extreme beauty and elegance" of its new appearance. Alas, and alas (for the daring speculators, the red-coated waiters, and their hosts of assistants, the singers and the artistes, the ropedancers, and the horse riders, the musicians, and all others concerned, cum multis aliis)-the visitor who goes to the "royal property" with any hope of realizing his old enthusiasm, any anticipation of being better entertained than he has been-any idea of hearing other than human nightingales, or seeing other than flowers artificial, will find himself most woefully mistaken.

Nevertheless, and nothwithstanding, in spite of the "ten-thousand additional lamps" advertised every season, with never an extra one visible; in spite of the attractions existing elsewhere, in the shape of Zoological Gardens, Cremornes, Highbury Barn Taverns, People's parks, short railway trips, Gravesends and Greenwiches-all of them fainous within the last fifty years-in spite of Theatres in plenty and concerts innumerable, and al fresco entertainments of all kinds, and panoramas without number, and picture exhibitions by the score, and new books by the hundred, and new ways of spending idle money by the thousand -inany a pleasant hour may yet be spent within the covered promenades, and dark walks, and on the dancing platforms, and about the music galleries, and the alleys, and the illuminated by-ways of Vauxhall Gardens.

You enter by the gates of course-without you happen to live in any of the surrounding houses, when, if so inclined, you may drop over the wall-and pass through the dim-lighted passage, and past the payplace, and through another passage past an orangestall, and on through an alley, and under a platform, and you are in sight of the military band who stand

Croker's Boswell.

beneath an immense crown of many-coloured lamps, -much to the detriment of their red-coats and eyes, for too much light is as bad as too much grease-and find yourself in the very glare and blaze, and noise and bustle, of the famous " 'Gardens;" and for once its traditions do not belic it--for it is splendid after all,

That is to say, splendid after a town-bred fashion; for Vauxhall has nothing of a country air about itnothing rural in the slightest degree; its trees, and walks, and flowers-to say nothing of its company and music-have all a certain sort of cockney-seeming quite charming to behold: and one is tempted to exclaimMy garden be the garden of the graces,

Flowers fuil of smiles, with Fashion for their queen;
My pleasant fields be crowds of joyous faces-
The brilliant rout, the concert, and the ball,
These be my joys in endless carnival!

And for your tedious country-mornings bright Give me a London, with its noon and night !* However, now we are fairly in the garden, let us look about us. It is a pity we came so early; for the daylight is not nearly gone; and the lamps at the further end of the walks are not yet lighted; and the orchestra in the centre, where all the gravel-ways terminate, is not yet filled; and the gayest of the company have not yet arrived. But patience and a stroll. All round against the walls and under the theatre are boxes--or "arbors" as Pepys calls them, though there's never a green leaf or a flower about them now, whatever there might have been in his time-with wooden benches at the side and tables in the centre, each laid with a not over fair white cloth, on which plates, and glasses, and wooden cruet-stands are daintily arrayed. But you must not look for too great a display of china and glass, for the plates are delft, the glasses are "blown,” and the stands, though they are made to hold six cruets, really contain only two-plain mustard and salt, the first of very innocent piquancy indeed. But we have no need to sit down in the "abors" just now; they are quite empty at present, and the waiters do not seem to look very anxiously at the company as yet, for it is not nine o'clock. Glancing at the preparations for feasting, and picturing Lady Caroline Petersham and her gallant trifler as even yet among the strollers, we take our way round the "gardens." On through the covered way, as yet only partially lighted, till we come right in front of the "Stupendous Pictorial Representation of the Kremlin at Moscow," which has a peculiarly unsubstantial appearance by daylight—especially as you notice on all the towers and pinnacles large white wheels affixed, which will probably blaze away by-and-by in most admirable disorder-and observe that in the grounds in front a solitary individual with a ladder is passing from place to place; now fixing something against the principal tower, suddenly disappearing behind the row of palaces in front, and then as suddenly popping his head out amongst the distant mountains; and presently making a detour, coming round to the front again with his ladder and disturbing the two rusty-looking sheep, as they are quictly cropping the herbage in front of the "Kremlin."

At all this a couple of dozen eyes or so, belonging to about half that number of individuals, are occasionally directed; except when the bodies belonging to the eyes turn round to the firework gallery at the back, and allow the eyes aforesaid to examine with considerable attention the half-Chinese lantern which informs them, in red letters on a yellow ground, that the admission to the noble elevation is only "one shilling."

But before we have time to bestow more than a cursory glance at the Italian landscape, now lighted up; or taken a good look at Neptune and his five senhorses, newly painted white for the season, with long jets of water playing from their distended nostrils, and

Ballads and Poems. By Martin F. Tupper,

C

three similar jets spouting up from the points of their master's trident, which fall with a bubbling sound into the rather shallow, and slightly muddy, and excessively weedy reservoir which represents the ocean; or wondered what folks could see to attract them in the shabby little blanket-covered hut called the gipsey's tent, or in the brown-skinned and not over-clean inhabitants, one of whom is lighting her fire in front with a few knobs of Newcastle and a half-penny bundle of white wood, such as they sell at the chandlers' shops, and desists from her interesting and rural occupation to request a pretty-looking girl in white, leaning on the arm of a town-bred dandy in black, to "cross her hand with silver, and she will tell her the name of the gentleman she is to marry; whether he is tall or short, dark or fair, good-tempered or otherwise, how many children she will have," &c., &c., at all of which the lady in white laughs pleasantly, and the dandy in black sillily; or before we have had time to consult the far-famed disciple of Merlin, who, for "the small charge of one shilling," tells you a good deal more than you ever knew before, and who resides in a little thatched cottage, rather out of repair, but ornamented with ribbons and coloured lamps, notwithstanding-the sound of a dustman's bell comes clanging through the air, and we find ourselves trooping with a couple of hundred others towards the music gallery, now splendidly illuminated, where a grand vocal and instrumental concert" is about to take place.

66

In the centre of about a thousand people we take our stand, and listen to the concert. First, there is a glee by two ladies and two gentlemen, the ladies in gay clothes and bonnets, and the gentlemen in full dress suits and curled hair. The singing of this is very fine; but when a bloated old fellow comes forward to give us a solo, and we look upon his face and note the evidences of hard drink and dissipation plainly visible there, and remember that it is not many years ago since he took part with the ill-fated Malibran in carrying the town before him, we find greater pleasure in turning round and glancing respectfully at the many pretty faces, and catching a glimpse of the hundreds of pretty eyes, black, blue, grey, and hazel, turned upwards to the singers. And so the concert goes on; but cre we have lost the last notes of the last new ballad, or recognised the opera overture that is charming all the town, the bell rings again, and we are off like mad to the ballet theatre, to witness the living tableaux in white lit up with resplendent coloured fire, and made gay and glorious with music, and the hushed attention of the crowds of spectators.

And then the Rotunda, whose lower doors are not opened till the boxes, with their shilling charge, are filled to overflowing. Can anything be more gay and enlivening than the performances within?

Can any

thing exceed the grace with which the dozen young ladies in hunting suits go through their performances on horseback?—and turning, and wheeling, and leaping, and galloping round and round and across fivebarred gates, held upright by servants in livery, and out and through and over the circle again and again? Nothing but the performance of Mademoiselle Somebody-with-a-long-name, who puts her courser through his paces and makes him dance a quadrille and waltz, and go through the steps of a polka to the music of the band-c -or the performances of Mademoiselle Somebodyelse on a "bare-backed steed" in the character of a Swiss Peasant Girl. But, notwithstanding the beauty and grace of the ladies, the skill of the clown, who discourses sweet music on a row of pine sticks, and brings beautiful sounds from a queer-looking mass of slatecoloured stones, with a pair of drumsticks tipped with leather, something after the manner of playing the ancient dulcimer, must not be overlooked by any means. But less to our taste are the evolutions of Professor

Unpronounceable-name and his infant son, who throw themselves about in the most surprising manner, with a strange disregard, apparently, for broken limbs and dislocated shoulders!-and the contortions of another foreign gentleman, with sandy hair and a snub nose, who swings on a slack rope to the braying of a brass band as if he meant to commit extravagant suicide in sight of all the crowd. So back to the concert or into the refreshment boxes we retreat perforce; and before we have quite finished our supper, and so tested the truth of the tradition about the phantom ham and visionary beef whose slices are cut so extraordinarily thin as to be in danger of blowing out of your plate, the two bands have united into one, the concert has ended, the fireworks at the "Kremlin" are over, the last rocket-stick having fallen, and the blue fire paled; the steady folks the fathers of families and mothers of little ones at home, have departed-the "fast" young men have just arrived, and the "Bal al fresco" has commenced.

And without waiting to notice more than that the style of dancing is rather more free that graceful, we take our departure also, full of a calm kind of regret that, as it is more years than we care to tell since last we visited Vauxhall Gardens, they have disappointed us more than a little. But perhaps, the change is in us as much as in them; or, perhaps, like some other folks, old as well as young, our memory retains only the pleasant things pertaining to our enjoyments, rejecting altogether everything in them that was disagreeable and sad.

While newer kinds of amusement have come into vogue, the once famed masquerade has fallen into it disuse, though it was formerly the favourite pastime of the nobility both at Vauxhall and Ranelagh Gardens on the other side of the river. Poor Goldsmith, it is said, was amazingly fond of masquerading at Vauxhall, and in the "Citizen of the World," letter seventy-one, he gives us a description of the Gardens which, with the aid of a little fancy, might almost do for the Vauxhall of the present day. It is the Chinese philosopher who is speaking:-"Upon entering the gardens," says he, "I found every sense occupied with more than expected pleasure; the lights were everywhere glimmering through the scarcely moving trees; the fullbodied concert bursting on the stillness of the night; the natural concert of the birds in the more retired parts of the grove vieing with that which was formed by art; the company gaily dressed; and the tables spread with various delicacies; all conspired to fill my imagination with the visionary happiness of the Arabian lawgiver and lifted me into an ecstacy of admiration."

Things are changed, however, since this paragraph was first penned. Vauxhall Gardens have been sadly shorn of their former fine dimensions; and "the retired parts of the grove" are no longer gay with the music of the birds; but, the arcades and alleys, where our forefathers were wont to ramble and make love, are silent and deserted, hemmed in on everyside, save one, by long rows of new houses whose bedroom windows fairly overlook the entire manor, and penetrate the mysteries of the fire-works behind the gigantic clouds and mountains of the "Kremlin at Moscow."

G. F. P.

WASTE OF MONEY.-No mistakes are more sincerely mourned over in after life, than a foolish waste of money in youth. The thing is altogether a matter of habit, and he who does not set his habits right in this particular, will lament it all his days. But the young man, because his real wants are few, imagines they always will be. Because he has to provide for himself alone, he has do idea that others are to be dependent upon him. He has health, youth, energy, and strength, and he forgets that they will not always last.-Burnap.