Unattractive Maiden Lane leading from Southampton Street back of the Adelphi Theatre is narrow and usually overcrowded with many people and business vehicles. It was in this street, where the house No. 20 stands, that the great Turner was born in 1775, his father here having carried on his profession of hair-dresser. Voltaire, the Frenchman, lived in this thoroughfare for a time. In our own times, close by the stage door of the Adelphi, the actor William Terriss was done to death by a madman. Claude Duval the highwayman celebrated in song and story was captured in "The Hole in the Wall," a well-patronized tavern of the 17th century. It stood in Chandos Street, the second house from Bedford on the north side of the road. [Illustration: Adelphi Terrace] High above Victoria Embankment, Adelphi Terrace, with Cleopatra's Needle just below by the riverside, shows a line of fine old derelict houses whose windows command a view of the Thames, Waterloo and Charing Cross bridges, and the picturesque confusion of shipping on the Surrey side so often muffled in fog. In the house No. 5, Garrick the actor died, and on a tablet are the words: David Garrick Actor Lived Here B 1716 D 1779 The neighbourhood is known as The Adelphi. In 1760, four brothers, Scotch architects named Adam, began laying out the roads, and their names were given to William, Adam, John and Robert streets. At No. 2 Robert Street lived Thomas Hood, and here he wrote the "Song of the Shirt." Near Buckingham Street once stood the palace of George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, given him by King James I. Before that, in the time of the Reformation, it had belonged to the Archbishop of York and was on the south, or river, side of the Strand. The street is dreary and desolate appearing now. In a house at one end near the old Water Gate Dickens had Betsy Trotwood engage a room for David Copperfield in the book of that name. Across the way at the southwest corner overlooking the river Samuel Pepys lived for many years, and Jean Jacques Rosseau and David Hume lived together in this street in 1765. In the public gardens beyond Buckingham Street is the Water Gate of York House, a substantial relic in the middle of green lawns. It was built by the Duke of Buckingham as the first stage in the rebuilding of York Palace but the task was never completed. Villiers Street is a clean and quiet thoroughfare, where people seem to walk sedately as though strolling through a graveyard. It is named for George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, who was a fashionable courtier much beloved by King James I., and who paid gallant court to Anne of Austria, wife of the French King Louis XIII. The establishment of Charing Cross Station robbed the street of its western side. Pepys' companion diarist, John Evelyn, lived hereabouts, and Richard Steele, too, after the death of his wife.