tacks, and so found a way to force the rich people to
attend to them.'

"We went out to walk over long hills, and looked at Criffel, then
without his cap, and down into Wordsworth's country. There we sat
down, and talked of the immortality of the soul. It was not
Carlyle's fault that we talked on that topic, for he had the natural
disinclination of every nimble spirit to bruise itself against walls,
and did not like to place himself where no step can be taken. But he
was honest and true, and cognizant of the subtile links that bind ages
together, and saw how every event affects all the future. 'Christ died
on the tree: that built Dunscore kirk yonder: that brought you and me
together. Time has only a relative existence.'

"He was already turning his eyes towards London with a scholar's
appreciation. London is the heart of the world, he said, wonderful
only from the mass of human beings. He liked the huge machine. Each
keeps its own round. The baker's boy brings muffins to the window at a
fixed hour every day, and that is all the Londoner knows, or wishes
to know, on the subject. But it turned out good men. He named certain
individuals, especially one man of letters, his friend, the best mind
he knew, whom London had well served."[A]

[Footnote A: "English Traits," by R.W. Emerson. First Visit to
England.]

"Carlyle," says Emerson, "was already turning his eyes towards
London," and a few months after the interview just described he did
finally fix his residence there, in a quiet street in Chelsea, leading
down to the river-side. Here, in an old-fashioned house, built in the
reign of Queen Anne, he and his wife settled down in the early summer
of 1834; here they continued to live together until she died; and here
Carlyle afterwards lived on alone till the end of his life.

With another man, of whom he now became the neighbour--Leigh Hunt--he
had already formed a slight acquaintance, which soon ripened into
a warm friendship and affection on both sides, in spite of their
singular difference of temperament and character.

"It was on the 8th of February, 1832," says Mr. Thornton Hunt, "that
the writer of the essays named 'Characteristics' received, apparently
from Mr. Leigh Hunt, a volume entitled 'Christianism,' for which he
begged to express his thanks. By the 20th of February, Carlyle, then
lodging in London, was inviting Leigh Hunt to tea, as the means of
their first meeting; and by the 20th of November, Carlyle w