Here, the loud self-assertion of Modern Progress--which has reformed so much in manners, and altered so little in men--meets the flat contradiction that scatters its pretensions to the winds.

Here, while the national prosperity feasts, like another Belshazzar, on the spectacle of its own magnificence, is the Writing on the Wall, which warns the monarch, Money, that his glory is weighed in the balance, and his power found wanting.
Situated in such a neighborhood as this, Vauxhall Walk gains by comparison, and establishes claims to respectability which no impartial observation can fail to recognize.

A large proportion of the Walk is still composed of private houses.

In the scattered situations where shops appear, those shops are not besieged by the crowds of more populous thoroughfares.

Commerce is not turbulent, nor is the public consumer besieged by loud invitations to "buy." Bird-fanciers have sought the congenial tranquillity of the scene; and pigeons coo, and canaries twitter, in Vauxhall Walk.