This "little, dirty, tumble-down public-house" of Dickens was the "Fox-under-the-Hill." It stood at the bottom of Ivy Lane. The ram-shackle building disappeared with the formation of the Victoria Embankment and Gardens, but the passage in question still remains, and, although it is not noticed by the thousands of people who walk by it daily, Ivy Lane is one of the most interesting bits of old London. Stow, in his _Survey_, alludes to it thus: "Ivy Bridge, in the High Street, which had a way under it leading to the Thames, the like as sometime had the Strand Bridge, is now taken down, but the lane remaineth as afore; or better, and parteth the liberty of the Duchy (of Lancaster) and the city of Westminster on that south-side." Strype adds that the lane was "very bad and almost impassable." As it was very narrow, and the descent was steep, its inconvenience is easily understood. The passage is still here, but, at the river end, it is enclosed by gates. Ivy Bridge, or Pier, was the landing-place for the halfpenny steamboats which plied between the Strand and London Bridge. Here a lamentable explosion, by which many people were killed, occurred in August, 1847, on the _Cricket_, and, soon afterwards, the "Fox" landing-stage was disused. From the "Fox-under-the-Hill" it is an easy transition to the "dark arches" which made such an impression on the mind of Charles Dickens. They form a small town in themselves, and although tenanted by wine-merchants, and other law-abiding people, they are still "mysterious" enough to strike one with wonderment that such a dreary spot can exist within hail of the busy Strand. "The Adelphi arches, many of which are used for cellars and coal-wharves," wrote John Timbs, half a century ago, "remind us, in their grim vastness, of the Etruscan cloaca of ancient Rome. Beneath the 'dark arches,' as they were (and are) called, the most abandoned characters used to lurk; outcasts and vagrants came there to sleep; and many a street-thief escaped from his pursuers, before the introduction of gas-lights and a vigilant police. Even now tramps prowl in a ghastly manner down the dim-lit passages." The condition of things has not changed much during these fifty years, and a stranger would be well-advised in not venturing on a voyage of discovery through this strange region, alone. Augustus Egg placed the scene of one of his most tragic pictures on the banks of the river by the Adelphi arches. In these caverns a battery of guns was held in readiness in connection with the great Chartist meeting, on Kennington Common, on April 10, 1848. The piers on which the arches rest having shown signs of insecurity, the entire structure was underpinned, and strengthened in other ways, in the years 1872-4.