THE FLASK, EBURY SQUARE.—An old tavern, of which there are various mentions in the eighteenth century (Crace, _Catal._, p. 311, No. 59; Beaver’s _Chelsea_, p. 307). In the thirties it had a tea-garden with a colonnade overgrown by creepers running round two sides of the garden, and a fine fountain. A skittle club played in the garden or in a covered pavilion adjoining. The tavern seems to have been demolished about 1868, when Ebury Square was partly rebuilt. There is an engraving of ‘The Flask Tavern,’ showing the garden, published in 1837 by J. Moore, from a drawing by H. Jones. {30} Hampton’s balloon, and Graham’s, which came into collision with the Exhibition, June 16, 1851 (Turnor’s _Astra Castra_, p. 220). {31} Soyer had superintended gratuitously various soup-kitchens for the poor of London, and established model kitchens at Scutari and in the Crimea during the war of 1855. G. A. Sala says of him: ‘He was a vain man, but he was good and kind and charitable.’ {33} The house (pulled down in 1857) was about 150 yards to the east of the Albert Hall. The Imperial Institute and Imperial Institute Road are now on the site of the Horticultural Gardens. {37a} In 1828 Pickering Place and Terrace, close by, were built. {37b} Early in the thirties, before 1834. {38} Now 47, Hereford Road, Bayswater. {39} _Modern Sabbath_, 1797, p. 49. {40a} In 1824 a duel was interrupted by the police. {40b} August, 1822, p. 138 _f._ {40c} The Acrotormentarian Society. {42} The site is near the filter-beds of the New River Company. The Eel-Pie (or Sluice) House Tavern has sometimes been confused with the Sluice House proper, a wooden building contiguous to it. The New River Company had one of their sluices here, and the house was tenanted by two of their walksmen or inspectors; view in Hone’s _Every Day Book_, 1826, p. 696. {44a} Sylvester (or Silvester) was one of the claimants to the invention of the optical ghost illusion well known as ‘Pepper’s Ghost’ at the Polytechnic (Frost’s _Lives of the Conjurors_, pp. 314, 329). {44b} J. Greenwood’s chapter is headed ‘Johnson’s Retreat.’ It may be doubtful whether it is intended for Weston’s, or for some other similar resort in the north of London. {46a} Boyne’s _Trade Tokens_, ed. Williamson, ii., p. 817, No. 61. An eighteenth-century proprietor named Holmes died in 1744. {46b} Green in 1823, 1832, etc. {47} On August 29, 1811, Sadler ascended from the Mermaid with Mr. H. Beaufoy; _cf. Tyssen Library Catalogue_ (Hackney, 1888), pp. 6, 8, _Journal of Aerial Voyage_, etc. {48a} Stone pillars used as targets and called by various quaint names—Jehu, Old Absoly, Bob Peak, the Castle, etc. They were placed in the fields at unequal distances, like the ‘holes’ in a golf-course, and the archers passed from one to another. {48b} It is marked in a Finsbury Fields map of 1737. {48c} _London Evening Post_, August 4 to 7, 1764.