412. Gibbon's house and garden, at Lausanne. The mansion, as Gibbon tells us himself, 'was spacious and convenient, connected on the north side with the city' (that is, in a narrow street), 'and open on the south to a beautiful and boundless horizon. A pleasure-ground of four acres was laid out by the taste of M. Deyverdun. From the garden, a rich scenery of meadows and vineyards descend to the Leman lake; and the prospects, stretching far beyond the lake, are crowned by the stupendous mountains of Savoy.', The house and grounds are now occupied by a rich banker; but there is no appearance that any expense, since Gibbon's death, has been bestowed upon the place. Nature has preserved the terrace, which commands a prospect of the country, the lake, and the mountains; but the summer-house at the end of it, where Gibbon composed the last page of his history, is now a forlorn room, the repository of broken earthenware and fragments of worthless refuse. (Ibid., p. 81.)
