OUR SENTIMENTAL GARDEN 



call picturesque perspicuity, is the wonderful bird's-eye 

 view of Edinburgh set down by James Gordon of Rothie- 

 may, and engraved at Amsterdam by F. de Wit, about 

 a century earlier.) This plan of Turgot is an elaborate 

 affair indeed^an atlas of twenty large sheets, showing 

 practically every individual house of any importance. 

 Would we had such a work in existence dealing with 

 Georgian London ! 



Well, to investigate. . . . Aye, here are the orchards and 

 market gardens, beginning at the very back of a narrow 

 line of houses, covering all the ground of what nowadays 

 is a close network of stone-fronted streets ! Here stands 

 the Hotel d'Evreux, the last, moving westward, of that 

 array of lordly mansions : the Hotels de Montbazon, de 

 Guebrian, de Charost, de Duras. ... A few of these 

 patrician dwellings, each with their own formal gardens 

 stretching southwards to the Champs Elysees, have re- 

 tained to our own times their dignity unimpaired. But 

 where are now scattered most of these grand French 

 family names, since the tornado of the great Revolution ? 

 But, to our map. . . . yes, this Hotel d'Evreux whilom 

 appanage of Madame de Pompadour, now the aforesaid 

 Palais de 1'Elysee / residence, in due rotation, of the swift- 

 changing presidents of the Republics here under my finger. 

 And its position unquestionably fixes, some two hundred 

 yards westward, that of the now vanished Institution 

 Delescluze, so interesting to me. And here spread them- 

 selves the orchards, of which the existence a moment ago 

 was, after all, only a matter of surmise ! 

 My discovery adds particularity now to the remembrance 

 of that mellow place. . . . A goodly number of antiquated 



