It was hard to conceive of anything “brilliant” in such a place, save the little half-starved boy employed at the blacking factory in Hungerford Market, who used to make his way thither. “One of his favourite localities,” says Mr. Forster, “was a little public-house by the water-side called the Fox-under-the-Hill, approached by an underground passage, which we once missed in looking for it together; and he had a vision, which he has mentioned in ‘Copperfield,’ of sitting eating something on a bench outside and looking at some coal-heavers dancing.” This memorial has for years borne a dismal forlorn aspect, very suggestive of this despairing season in Dickens’s childhood. Within these few months, therefore, it was like losing a friend to find the “brilliant ales” gone and the house all but levelled. On the higher level of the terrace, facing the Strand, are some gloomy-looking hotels, of many windows, “The Caledonian” and “The Adelphi.” There is here the air of dingy old fashion, so well suited to Pickwick, and we know that this Adelphi Hostelry is the “Osborne’s Hotel,” where Wardle and his daughter Emily put up, and where the droll scene occurred of Mr. Snodgrass being secreted during dinner--the fat boy running “something sharp into Mr. Pickwick’s leg” to attract his attention. As we look up at the first-floor windows the scene rises before us, and the whole appears in harmony with the humours of Pickwick. Most natural is it, too, that the Wardles should put up at such a house, for the dingy furniture, etc., all seems to belong to that era. Here in the Adelphi we come upon a handsome building which houses the useful Society of Arts, its energetic Secretary, Sir H. Trueman Wood, and Librarian, Mr. Wheatley, so well skilled in London lore.