esided from 1782
until the time of his death in 1819--a period during which many an
illustrious man passed between those two white pillars that support the
little balcony over the front door; among the rest Louis Philippe and
his brothers, the Ducs de Montpensier and Beaujolais, and the Marquis de
Chastellus, a major-general in the French army, serving under the Count
de Rochambeau, whom he accompanied from France to the States in 1780.
The journal of the marquis contains this reference to his host: "After
dinner we went to drink tea with Mr. Langdon. He is a handsome man, and
of noble carriage; he has been a member of Congress, and is now one
of the first people of the country; his house is elegant and well
furnished, and the apartments admirably well wainscoted" (this reads
like Mr. Samuel Pepys); "and he has a good manuscript chart of the
harbor of Portsmouth. Mrs. Langdon, his wife, is young, fair, and
tolerably handsome, but I conversed less with her than her husband, in
whose favor I was prejudiced from knowing that he had displayed great
courage and patriotism at the time of Burgoynes's expedition."

It was at the height of the French Revolution that the three sons of the
Due d'Orleans were entertained at the Langdon mansion. Years afterward,
when Louis Philippe was on the throne of France, he inquired of a
Portsmouth lady presented at his court if the mansion of ce brave
Gouverneur Langdon was still in existence.

The house stands back a decorous distance from the street, under
the shadows of some gigantic oaks or elms, and presents an imposing
appearance as you approach it over the tessellated marble walk. A
hundred or two feet on either side of the gate, and abutting on
the street, is a small square building of brick, one story in
height--probably the porter's lodge and tool-house of former days. There
is a large fruit garden attached to the house, which is in excellent
condition, taking life comfortably, and having the complacent air of a
well-preserved beau of the ancien regime. The Langdon mansion was
owned and long occupied by the late Rev. Dr. Burroughs, for a period of
forty-seven years the esteemed rector or St. John's Church.

At the other end of Pleasant Street is another notable house, to which
we shall come by and by. Though President Washington found Portsmouth
but moderately attractive from an architectural point of view, the
visitor of to-day, if he have an antiquarian taste, will find himself