The house of Gibbon, in which he completed his “Decline and Fall,” is in
the lower part of the town of Lausanne, behind the church of St.
Francis, and on the right of the road leading down to Ouchy. Both the
house and the garden have been much changed. The wall of the Hotel
Gibbon occupies the site of his summer-house, and the _berceau_ walk has
been destroyed to make room for the garden of the hotel; but the terrace
looking over the lake, and a few acacias, remain.
Gibbon’s record of the completion of his great labour is very
impressive. “It was on the day, or rather the night, of the 27th of
June, 1787, between the hours of eleven and twelve, that I wrote the
last line of the last page, in a summer-house in my garden. After laying
down my pen, I took several turns in a _berceau_, or covered walk of
acacias, which commands a prospect of the country, the lake, and the
mountains. The air was temperate, the sky was serene, the silver orb of
the moon was reflected from the waves, and all nature was silent.”
At a little inn at Morges, about two miles distant from Lausanne, Lord
Byron wrote the _Prisoner of Chillon_, in the short space of _two days_,
during which he was detained here by bad weather, June 1816: “thus
adding one more deathless association to the already immortalized
localities of the Lake.”