xceptions to all rules; but if the plan of
treatment we have proposed be carried out, we do not see that any church in
city or country need long be in want of poor preaching.

CHAPTER XXIX.

SHELVES A MAN'S INDEX.

In Chelsea, a suburb of London, and on a narrow street, with not even a
house in front, but, instead thereof, a long range of brick wall, is the
house of Thomas Carlyle. You go through a narrow hall and turn to the left,
and are in the literary workshop where some of the strongest thunderbolts
of the world have been forged. The two front windows have on them scant
curtains of reddish calico, hung at the top of the lower sash, so as not to
keep the sun from looking down, but to hinder the street from looking in.

The room has a lounge covered with the same material, and of construction
such as you would find in the plainest house among the mountains. It looks
as if it had been made by an author not accustomed to saw or hammer, and in
the interstices of mental work. On the wall are a few wood-cuts in plain
frames or pinned against the wall; also a photograph of Mr. Carlyle taken
one day, as his family told us, when he had a violent toothache and could
attend to nothing else, it is his favorite picture, though it gives him a
face more than ordinarily severe and troubled.

In long shelves, unpainted and unsheltered by glass or door, is the library
of the world-renowned thinker. The books are worn, as though he had bought
them to read. Many of them are uncommon books, the titles of which we never
saw before. American literature is almost ignored, while Germany
monopolizes many of the spaces. We noticed the absence of theological
works, save those of Thomas Chalmers, whose name and genius he well-nigh
worshiped. The carpets are old and worn and faded--not because he cannot
afford better, but because he would have his home a perpetual protest
against the world's sham. It is a place not calculated to give inspiration
to a writer. No easy chairs, no soft divans, no wealth of upholstery, but
simply a place to work and stay. Never having heard a word about it, it was
nevertheless just such a place as we expected.

We had there confirmed our former theory of a man's study as only a part of
himself, or a piece of tight-fitting clothing. It is the shell of the
tortoise, just made to fit the tortoise's back. Thomas Carlyle could have
no other kind of a workshop. What would he do with a damask-covered table,
or