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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 _entree_ 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} "That Vauxhall Gardens were under the special protection of, that they drew the very breath of their attractiveness from, the ceremonial Simpson, who can deny? When he flitted from walk to walk, from box to box, and welcomed everybody to the 'Royal property,' right royally did things go on! Who would _then_ have dreamt that the illustrious George {170b}--he of the Piazza--would ever be 'honoured with instructions to sell'? that his eulogistic pen would be employed in giving the puff superlative to the Elysian haunts of quondam fashion--in other words--painting the lily-gilding refined gold? But, alas!
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