had a life of duller calm than the indwellers of our square.” Hans Place may also be approached from Sloane Street, and No. 22 Hans Place, is the south-east corner. [Picture: No. 22 Hans Place] Among its inmates have been Lady Caroline Lamb, {31} Miss Mitford, Lady Bulwer, Miss Landon, Mrs. S. C. Hall, and Miss Roberts. How much of the “romance and reality” of life is in a moment conjured up in the mind by the mention of the names here grouped in local association! The editor of the memoirs of L. E. L. records two or three circumstances which give a general interest to Hans Place. Here it was that Miss Landon was born on the 14th August, 1802, in the house now No. 25; and “it is remarkable that the greater portion of L. E. L.’s existence was passed on the spot where she was born. From Hans Place and its neighbourhood she was seldom absent, and then not for any great length of time; until within a year or two of her death, she had there found her home, not indeed in the house of her birth, but close by. Taken occasionally during the earlier years of childhood into the country, it was to Hans Place she returned. Here some of her school time was passed. When her parents removed she yet clung to the old spot, and, as her own mistress, chose the same scene for her residence. When one series of inmates quitted it, she still resided there with their successors, returning continually after every wandering, ‘like a blackbird to his nest.’” The partiality of Miss Landon for London was extraordinary. In a letter, written in 1834, and addressed to a reverend gentleman, she ominously says, “When I have the good luck or ill luck (I rather lean to the latter opinion) of being married, I shall certainly insist on the wedding excursion not extending much beyond Hyde Park Corner.” When in her sixth year (1808), Miss Landon was sent to school at No. 22 Hans Place. This school was then kept by Miss Bowden, who in 1801 had published ‘A Poetical Introduction to the Study of Botany,’ {32a} and in 1810 a poem entitled ‘The Pleasures of Friendship.’ {32b} Miss Bowden became the Countess St. Quentin, and died some years ago in the neighbourhood of Paris. In this house, where she had been educated, Miss Landon afterwards resided for many years as a boarder with the Misses Lance, who conducted a ladies’ school. “It seems,” observes the biographer of L. E. L., “to have been appropriated to such purposes from the time it was built, nor was L. E. L. the first who drank at the ‘well of English’ within its walls. Miss Mitford, we believe, was educated there, and Lady Caroline Lamb was an inmate for a time.”