But what a last night was that! There were many visions in one. From the Vauxhall of Victoria, fancy reverted to the Vauxhall of the first George, and the walks became immediately peopled with periwigged beaux, and courtly dames fresh from the frames of Kneller. Never did living eye behold such a congregation of grotesque beauties, out of a picture-gallery. The paint was brilliant as the great master's canvas, the arrangement of the patches was a triumph of art, the flash of the diamonds made the lamps look dim, the flutter of fans filled the air with a delicious freshness. All the wits of the last century were there, from Steele and Addison to Fielding and Goldsmith, and from these to Sheridan, and the gallant roysterers of a later era. There was Beau Brummell;--it was the first night the world ever saw the astonishing spectacle of a starched cravat--the first night the great Discoverer of Starch ever exhibited to the vulgar gaze his sublime invention. That morning, a friend who called upon him encountered his servant on the stairs, descending from the Beau's dressing-room, with a whole armful of stiffened but rumpled cravats--there were at least seventy of the curiosities.--"What, in the name of mystery, have you got there?" inquired the friend,--"what _are_ those _things_?" "These, sir?" responded the valet,--"O, _these are our failures_!" The beau's cravat justified that night, by the perfection of its folds, the multiplicity of experiments. That seventy-first trial was indeed a triumph.
In the twinkle of an eye, what a change!--Beau Brummell had disappeared for ever! Renown and grace were dead. The stately dames had gone: fans, feathers, diamonds--all; and in their place appeared a very queer collection of feminine miscellanies, young and old, some from the country, some from the outskirts of the metropolis, dodging here and there, rushing from sight to sight, too eager and excited to see anything clearly; expressing their wonder in mingled peals of "My eye!" "Well, raally now!" and "Lauk-a-mercy!"--exclamations which were interrupted by frequent appeals to a bag of thick, home-manufactured sandwiches, borne on the arm--or critical observations on the ginger beer. The beaux, too, had vanished; and instead of the Sir Plumes, revelling in the "nice conduct of their clouded canes," came a crowd of London lads, with boots innocent of Warren and hands guiltless of gloves--creatures, at the bare sight of whom through a telescope, Sir Plume himself would have fainted. And as for the wits--behold, where they of late perambulated, a troop of practical jokers, staggering forwards through the walks, or gathered in twos and threes and half-dozens in the supper-boxes, extinguishing lamps, smashing crockery, beating in the crowns of hats, and it may be smoking cigars in a kind of open secrecy.