us, was occupied by the Czar Peter on his visit to London. Its various chambers are now given over to the Charity Organisation Society, to a maternity association, etc.; but on going up the stairs we see palpable vestiges of the magnificence of the place, which must have had some connection with old York House. For we find ourselves in a spacious and imposing drawing-room, of which the entire walls are oak as well as the flooring, while the two elegant doorways are embroidered round with a rich carved flowering border. But it is the unique ceiling that will excite admiration, consisting of a thick wheel-like border, filled in with the boldest and richest stucco-work, presenting solidly wrought roses and leaves. This encircles a painted allegorical piece, but so grimed with dirt that the subject cannot be clearly seen. It is but little damaged. One could fancy this room restored and furnished, and the rude Muscovite seated in congenial proximity to his favourite river. The side of the house that looks over the Embankment, though covered with whitewash, displays a tall elegant central window of a decorated kind, showing that the whole must in its best days have been of a spacious and imposing character. The view from this window, as indeed it is from all these corner houses giving on the river, is charming. On the opposite side of the street, a few doors higher up, is another old mansion of some pretence--also given over to offices--and noteworthy for the twenty or so grotesque heads, one of which is set over every window. It is hard to account for this odd form of adornment, unless it came with the Dutch. They are found in many quarters of London, some putting their tongues out to the spectators, others crying, laughing, etc. This mansion is believed to have been the one occupied by Mr. Secretary Pepys, and so we look at it with interest. But this does not exhaust the associations of the Adelphi. There we lately saw the “house breakers” hard at work levelling what has some very pathetic associations with the early life of Dickens. For many generations now, a dilapidated miscellany of shanties has been visible from the terrace; a shed, outhouses, a small mean-storied thing in the last stage of decay, with an ancient cart or two lying up in ordinary. Across the wall ran a faded half-effaced legend, in what were once gold letters on a blue ground:-- +-------------------------+ | THE FOX-UNDER-THE-HILL. | | HOARE & CO’S ENTIRE, | | AND BRILLIANT ALES. | +-------------------------+