To an artistic eye one of the pleasantest sights is an old-fashioned mansion standing in its garden, with an elegant gate of twisted iron, monograms, and a gilt helmet, it may be, interlaced, with sinuous leaves gracefully bent. Through its openings we see the straight flagged walk leading to the fan-shaped steps, with the smooth flowing rail of hammered iron, opening out in a graceful curve. The doorway is tall and narrow, with an overhanging cornice. The windows exhibit a feeling of design and balance. There are the high, the solidly imperishable carved eaves which no damp can penetrate. The whole has an air of grace; it suits its garden, and its garden suits it. Out at Clapton, nearly opposite to the Salvationist Barracks, is a house of this pattern; pleasing, if only as a survival of the well-designed suburban house, and which will well repay a walk. It is now a ladies’ school. * * * * * The larger mansions in London, which answer to noblemen’s “hôtels” in Paris, are few, and are not very imposing of their class. Of this grand and pretentious kind there are barely half a dozen. The old Northumberland House, with its well-known lion--now levelled--was perhaps the only one with historical associations. The Brothers Adam, who have done so much for the metropolis, do not seem to have been sufficiently appreciated in this line. Their work is found abundantly in the country and suburbs, in houses of “noblemen and gentlemen.” The speculator is ever casting hungry glances at these tempting morsels. One of the finest of these mansions, so interesting from its associations, was Chesterfield House, with its graceful façade, flanked by colonnades joining the two wings, its harmonious yet unpretending combination of spacious rooms and fine staircase. Of late years this mansion passed through all the vicissitudes of a “letting house,” and was finally disposed of to a wealthy magnate who is said to have shown much ability and skill in “exploiting” his purchase. In the gardens a row of magnificent mansions, stables, etc. was reared. The ground covered by the wings was also built over, and the house, shorn of its charming colonnades, now disposed against the blank brick walls at right angles to the main building, serves as a residence for the proprietor himself. It was whispered that this clever arrangement of the purchase had recouped the whole outlay, and that the mansion is now rent free. The room where, as the tradition runs, Johnson waited, is now lit with the electric light!