X 



A SUNDAY IN CHEYNE ROW 



I 



"TTTHILE in London I took a bright Sunday 

 ' ' afternoon to visit Chelsea, and walk along 

 Cheyne Row and look upon the house in which 

 Carlyle passed nearly fifty years of his life, and in 

 which he died. Many times I paced to and fro. 

 I had been there eleven years before, but it was on 

 a dark, rainy night, and I had brought away no 

 image of the street or house. The place now had 

 a more humble and neglected look than I expected 

 to see; nothing that suggested it had ever been the 

 abode of the foremost literary man of his time, but 

 rather the home of plain, obscure persons of little 

 means. One would have thought that the long 

 residence there of such a man as Carlyle would have 

 enhanced the value of real estate for many squares 

 around, and drawn men of wealth and genius to 

 that part of the city. The Carlyle house was unoc- 

 cupied, and, with its closed shutters and little pools 

 of black sooty water standing in the brick area in 

 front of the basement windows, looked dead and 

 deserted indeed. But the house itself, though 

 nearly two hundred years old, showed no signs of 



