At last the ancient domain of the Shepherd and Shepherdess was deserted even by the Salvation Army. In September, 1899, the newspapers announced that the Eagle premises were in the hands of the house-breakers. A few old frequenters hastened to revisit the place, and some others, no doubt, who had only heard of the Eagle as a somewhat low resort associated with that enigmatic song of their childhood, ‘Pop goes the Weasel,’ must have been surprised to find the buildings—rather handsome in their way—still in existence. The Eagle garden presented itself to such visitors as a large paved square, which, judging from its two surviving trees, could never have been truthfully described as thickly wooded. Conspicuous features were the large rotunda opposite the entrance, with its pit, now floored over, and the ‘new’ theatre (of 1877), adjoining Shepherdess Walk, practically unaltered, though dingy and dirt-begrimed beyond description. The Oriental orchestra in the garden still showed traces of its gaudy colouring, and a melancholy brick wall displayed remnants of primitive grotto-work. One could trace near the centre of the grounds the concrete-covered circle where many a light-hearted couple had danced before the days of the Conquests. {66} The rows of alcoves, with the balcony for promenaders above them, were still there, though no longer brightly painted, but mostly boarded up and filled with headless Venuses and Cupids—pagan deities of the gardens who nourished _circa_ A.D. 1838–1882. Soon after this, the huge Eagle tavern, surmounted by its proud stone bird, was demolished, and a smaller public-house of neat red brick (opened August, 1900) now covers part of its site. On the site of the theatre and its entrance, which faced Shepherdess Walk, and was adorned with two more stone eagles, we have now a police-station. Though all the old buildings have been destroyed, much of the garden space is still unoccupied, and in due season a solitary tree puts forth its leaves. [Newspaper notices, bills, and photographs taken at the time of the demolition of the Eagle (W.); Blanchard’s _Life_, by Clement Scott and Cecil Howard; Hollingshead’s _Footlights_ and _My Lifetime_; Ritchie’s _Night Side of London_; Baker’s _London Stage_.] {67} [Picture: Pleasure-Gardens, Eagle Tavern, circa 1838] THE ALBERT SALOON AND ROYAL STANDARD PLEASURE-GARDENS IN his own Shepherdess Walk—a little to the north of the Eagle—the enterprising Thomas Rouse had a not unsuccessful imitator in the person of one Henry Bradley, the proprietor of the Royal Standard tavern and pleasure-gardens. Some entertainments and concerts were given here in the early thirties, but the fame of the place, such as it was, belongs to the forties.