At the bottom of Hay Hill, we are in Berkeley Square, in many respects the most interesting of London’s “quadrates,” as they were once termed. It was formed on portions of the grounds of Berkeley House, and Evelyn, the Diarist, helped to lay out the estate, of which it is a part. Lansdowne House, with its gardens, occupies the south side of the square. This magnificent example of Adam’s work was erected for Lord Bute, George III.’s unpopular Minister, but was sold by him, in a yet unfinished state, to the Earl of Shelburne, the ancestor of the Marquis of Lansdowne, who now occupies it. It naturally dwarfs all the other houses in the square, but many of these are also full of interest. At No. 6 lived the second Lord Chatham, and here William Pitt sometimes stayed; close by, at No. 10, Sir Colin Campbell lived and died; and next door to his residence was the last of Horace Walpole’s homes in London, now indicated by a tablet. Other interesting people whose names have in the past been connected with Berkeley Square include Colley Cibber, and Charles James Fox; Lord Clive, who committed suicide at No. 45, and Lord Brougham, who occupied in turn two houses here; Lord and Lady Clermont, in whose house the beautiful Duchess of Devonshire took refuge from the Gordon Rioters, and Lady Anne Lindsay, who wrote “Auld Robin Gray”; Lord Canterbury, once Speaker of the House of Commons when Mr. Manners Sutton; and Child, the banker, whose daughter ran away with Lord Westmorland, and whose house, No. 38, now rebuilt, is the residence of the Earl of Rosebery. In fact the whole square is full of memories, social, historical, and political, and clinging about almost every house are recollections of the witty, the powerful, and the illustrious, who have at one time or another dwelt within their walls. From Berkeley Square and its adjacent streets we enter into that large district known as Mayfair, which in the next chapter we shall have all our work cut out to even superficially examine. [Illustration: THE MAY FAIR IN 1716.] CHAPTER V. _MAYFAIR._ “_Gay mansions with supper-rooms and dancing-rooms--full of light and music._”--CARLYLE, “SARTOR RESARTUS.” Compared with London as a whole, Mayfair is quite a small quarter; but regarded as a congeries of innumerable streets, and two large squares, it is an extensive and intricate area, and a summer’s day might well be exhausted before we had investigated all the twists and turns of its maze-like complexity. It is true that its northern half has some sort of method due to Sir Richard Grosvenor’s development of the great Westminster property, of which Grosvenor Square is the key-note; but its southern portion is, with here and there an exception, wanting in logical form, and threatens, I fear, to make the perambulation of it somewhat confusing to those to whom London is a sort of _terra incognita_.