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.
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