We now reach the Adelphi, a mass of large dwelling-houses and warehouses, built by the brothers Adam about 1770, on such a labyrinth of arches as startle a stranger who enters them for the first time.
Those noble streets which open into the Strand, now known as the Adelphi, are built above the ground formerly occupied by Durham House and its princely gardens, from whence Lady Jane Grey, the “nine days’ queen” (as our old chroniclers call her), was led, with loud acclaim, to the Tower, and then—in tears, to the scaffold. The ground itself on which she walked, and meditated, and saw her garden-flowers blow, is at noonday overhung with midnight darkness, excepting where, here and there, a gaslight throws its dim rays, and feebly illumines the cavernous gloom: where her youth and beauty once threw their sunshine a melancholy blackness now reigns. To us this dark land is filled with sad associations; and, though the grave hath long since closed over those who placed the crown upon her head, and then left her to bleed upon the block, we never walk through these sounding arches without thinking of their treachery.
Thousands who pass along the Strand never dream of the shadowy region which lies between them and the river—the black-browed arches that span right and left, before and behind, covering many a rood of ground on which the rain never beats nor the sunbeam rests, and at the entrance of which the wind only seems to howl and whine, as if afraid of venturing farther into the darkness. Many of our readers will no doubt conclude that such a dreary place as this must be deserted and tenantless: such is not the case. Here many of those strong horses which the countryman who visits London looks upon with wonder and envy, are stabled—huge, broad-chested steeds, such as may be seen dragging the heavily-laden coal-wagons up those steep passages which lead into the Strand, and which seem “to the manner born.”