GIBBON’S HOUSE, AT LAUSANNE.
The house of Gibbon, in which he completed his “Decline and Fall,” is in the lower part of the town of Lausanne, behind the church of St. Francis, and on the right of the road leading down to Ouchy. Both the house and the garden have been much changed. The wall of the Hotel Gibbon occupies the site of his summer-house, and the berceau walk has been destroyed to make room for the garden of the hotel; but the terrace looking over the lake, and a few acacias, remain.
Gibbon’s record of the completion of his great labour is very impressive. “It was on the day, or rather the night, of the 27th of June, 1787, between the hours of eleven and twelve, that I wrote the last line of the last page, in a summer-house in my garden. After laying down my pen, I took several turns in a berceau, or covered walk of acacias, which commands a prospect of the country, the lake, and the mountains. The air was temperate, the sky was serene, the silver orb of the moon was reflected from the waves, and all nature was silent.”
At a little inn at Morges, about two miles distant from Lausanne, Lord Byron wrote the Prisoner of Chillon, in the short space of two days, during which he was detained here by bad weather, June 1816: “thus adding one more deathless association to the already immortalized localities of the Lake.”