heaven knows, at thought of its beauty going, its dear tradition being
lost. But not as an unrelated masterpiece was Adam Street built by the
Brothers whose name it bears. An integral part it is in their noble
design of the Adelphi. It is the very key to the Adelphi, the well-
ordained initiation for us into that small, matchless quarter of
London, where peace and dignity do still reign--peace the more
beatific, and dignity the finer, by instant contrast with the chaos of
hideous sounds and sights hard by. What man so gross that, passing out
of the Strand into Adam Street, down the mild slope to the river, he
has not cursed the age he was born into--or blessed it because the
Adelphi cannot in earlier days have had for any one this fullness of
peculiar magic? Adam Street is not so beautiful as the serene Terrace
it goes down to, nor so curiously grand as crook-backed John Street.
But the Brothers did not mean it to be so. They meant it just as an
harmonious `lead' to those inner glories of their scheme. Ruin that
approach, and how much else do you ruin of a thing which--done
perfectly by masters, and done by them here as nowhere else could they
have done it--ought to be guarded by us very jealously! How to raise
on this irregular and `barbarous' ground a quarter that should be
`polite', congruous in tone with the smooth river beyond it--this was
the irresistible problem the Brothers set themselves and slowly,
coolly, perfectly solved. So long as the Adelphi remains to us, a
microcosm of the eighteenth century is ours. If there is any meaning
in the word sacrilege--

That, I remember, was the beginning of one of the sentences I composed
while I paced my room, thinking out my letter to The Times. I rejected
that sentence. I rejected scores of others. They were all too
vehement. Though my facility for indignation is not (I hope) less than
that of my fellows, I never had written to The Times. And now, though