"I have made much the same observation that
you have, Signor Cavaliere," returned Carlo,
"and it is on it that I build my hopes of
success."

"I heartily wish it you, both for dear Laura's
sake and your own. Good night, Signor Carlo."

"Good night, Signor Cavaliere!"

THROUGH LAMBETH TO VAUXHALL.

EVERYBODY who has once gone up the Thames
from London Bridge may ever after know with
his eyes shut when he is passing Lambeth. He
will smell it. Indeed, a nose fine to detect
the various blending of other odours with that
of the river, might indicate, blindfold, the whole
topography of the Surrey bank of the Thames
opposite London. There was mention before
the Conquest, of "Lambehithe, with all fields,
pastures, woods, and waters thereto belonging."
But most of the old spellings are held to show
that the place owed its name to an old word,
lam, meaning dirt, and that Lamhithe was,—
doubtless so named from its expanse of marsh,—
Dirt Haven.

It had its pleasaunces. Where Beaufoy's
distillery now stands, were once the gardens of
the Earl of Arundel, opposite Arundel House.
Those grounds being afterwards rented by the
earl's gardener, Boydell Cuper, were known as
Cuper's Gardens, whither fireworks, music, and
illuminations, tempted pleasure-seekers—who
themselves were of ill odour—more than a
century ago. That ground is now in the Lambeth
district of Saint John, which has its church opposite
the South-Western Railway Station. Here,
also, sixty years ago, the Royal Coburg Theatre,
since re-named the Victoria, came of a dispute
between leaseholders and ground landlord of the
Royal Circus, or the Surrey, which had then
just been burnt down, and has just been burnt
down again. The former burning of the Surrey
caused the building of the Coburg, which was
opened with a melodrama of knights in armour,
followed by a grand Asiatic ballet and a pantomime.

St. Mary's is the parish church of Lambeth,
and in St. Mary's district, towards the end of
the last century, Philip Astley opened his
"Amphitheatre of Arts." Astley was a tall
strong man, loud of voice, and corpulent in
later life, who gave up cabinet-making in his
youth to enlist in the 15th, or Elliot's Own
Light Horse. He served seven years, was
made rough-rider teacher and horse-breaker to
the regiment, and when, after seeing service in
Germany, he obtained his discharge, he made
his living out of horses. General Elliot gave
him a charger as a mark of esteem, and with
this and a horse bought in Smithfield, he began
to exhibit to all comers, in an open field near the
Halfpenny Hatch at Lambeth, for whatever he
could get when he sent the hat round. Then, he
engaged part of a large timber-yard which stood
where the theatre now stands. Here he boarded
in a circus, charged sixpence for admission,
placed a pent-house roof over the seats, and
performed of mornings to the music of a drum
and two fifes, within a rope ring open to the
sky. In the evening he had Chinese Shadows,
a learned horse, and tricks of sleight-of-hand,
in a large room at Number Twenty-two, Piccadilly.
The owner of the timber-yard was in
difficulties, and Astley had saved money enough
to lend him two hundred pounds on a mortgage
of the yard with all the timber in it. With the
two hundred pounds, the timber-merchant went
abroad, and was no more heard of. Astley thus
got in due time lawful possession of the place.
He sold the timber, and with the produce of it,
and sixty pounds, the value of a large diamond
ring which he picked up at the foot of
Westminster Bridge, and found no owner for, he
built in the timber-yard what he then called "the
Amphitheatre Riding House." This building
he enlarged as he got means, until the whole
ground was roofed in. Astley's wife was a
good horsewoman, his son also rode well as a
boy. When the Royal Circus, now the Surrey
Theatre, was being built, Astley, to compete
with it, added a stage and scenery to his Riding
Circle, which he then called, first the "Royal
Grove"—from the painting, grove-fashioned, of
the house before the curtain—and afterwards
"the Amphitheatre of Arts." In seventeen
'ninety-four, Astley being at that time with the
army as a volunteer, this theatre and nineteen
adjoining houses were burnt down. Astley came
home, and at once rebuilt it, opening it next
year as the Royal Amphitheatre, under the
patronage of the Prince of Wales and Duke of
York. Eight years later, it was again burnt
down, with forty adjoining houses; Astley, who
lost five-and-twenty thousand pounds by the
fire, being then in Paris, where also he had
founded an amphitheatre. Again the theatre
in Lambeth was promptly rebuilt: not to be
burnt down again until Ducrow's time, when
Ducrow sank under the affliction.

It is in the same district that, in the reign
of James the First, a family named Vaux held
some copyhold land. Afterwards Sir Samuel
Morland, Pepys's tutor, who had a lease of
Vauxhall House, built a sumptuous room in the
gardens, set up beautiful fountains, and made
of the place a pleasaunce, to which Charles
the Second and his ladies often came.
Morland was an ingenious man, whose house was
full of contrivances, and who planned a kitchen
in his coach, so that he could make soup,
broil steaks, or roast joints, as he travelled. It
was not until the year seventeen hundred and
thirty, that the general public found its way into
the shady gardens of Vauxhall House: Mr.
Jonathan Tyers having in that year opened the
place as a tavern. Two years later, he turned
the gardens to more profit, by calling them
Spring Gardens, and opening them with
illuminations and a masquerade. Success encouraged
him to build an orchestra, engage excellent
musicians, decorate, and erect alcoves. Masks were
commonly worn in the gardens, and Addison
tells us that the favourite drink was, for ladies