r the most part left without occupants
except their liveried guardians. We kept as quiet as possible, to avoid
all engagements. For now we were in London for London itself, to do
shopping, to see sights, to be our own master and mistress, and to live
as independent a life as we possibly could.

The first thing we did on the day of our arrival was to take a hansom
and drive over to Chelsea, to look at the place where Carlyle passed the
larger part of his life. The whole region about him must have been
greatly changed during his residence there, for the Thames Embankment
was constructed long after he removed to Chelsea. We had some little
difficulty in finding the place we were in search of. Cheyne (pronounced
"Chainie") Walk is a somewhat extended range of buildings. Cheyne Row is
a passage which reminded me a little of my old habitat, Montgomery
Place, now Bosworth Street. Presently our attention was drawn to a
marble medallion portrait on the corner building of an ordinary-looking
row of houses. This was the head of Carlyle, and an inscription informed
us that he lived for forty-seven years in the house No. 24 of this row
of buildings. Since Carlyle's home life has been made public, he has
appeared to us in a different aspect from the ideal one which he had
before occupied. He did not show to as much advantage under the
Boswellizing process as the dogmatist of the last century, dear old Dr.
Johnson. But he remains not the less one of the really interesting men
of his generation, a man about whom we wish to know all that we have a
right to know.

The sight of an old nest over which two or three winters have passed is
a rather saddening one. The dingy three-story brick house in which
Carlyle lived, one in a block of similar houses, was far from
attractive. It was untenanted, neglected; its windows were unwashed, a
pane of glass was broken; its threshold appeared untrodden, its whole
aspect forlorn and desolate. Yet there it stood before me, all covered
with its associations as an ivy-clad tower with its foliage. I wanted to
see its interior, but it looked as if it did not expect a tenant and
would not welcome a visitor. Was there nothing but this forbidding
house-front to make the place alive with some breathing memory? I saw
crossing the street a middle-aged woman,--a decent body, who looked as
if she might have come from the lower level of some not opulent but
respectable household. She might have some recollection of