The "Carlyle House,"--desecrated, indeed, to the scandal of the neighbours, for an interregnum of unholy years by a horde of lawless cats,--is now entirely restored to its pristine neatness and order. It is difficult to imagine any place less museum-like and more pleasantly homely than this silent, peaceful, darkly-panelled abode, which seems,--backed by its green garden-close,--to be indeed a survival of the past, breathing forth still the spirit of the departed seer. It was thus that Carlyle wrote of the street and the house some seventy years ago: "The street is flag-pathed, sunk-storied, iron-railed, all old-fashioned and tightly done up; looks out on a rank of sturdy old _pollarded_ (that is, beheaded) lime trees standing there like giants in _tawtie_ wigs (for the new boughs are still young); beyond this a high brick wall; backwards a garden, the size of our back one at Comely Bank, with trees, &c., in bad culture; beyond this, green hayfields and tree avenues, once a bishop's pleasure grounds, an unpicturesque yet rather cheerful outlook. The house itself is eminent, antique, wainscoted to the very ceiling, and has been all new painted and repaired; broadish stair with massive balustrade (in the old style), corniced and as thick as one's thigh; floors thick as a rock, wood of them here and there worm-eaten, yet capable of cleanliness, and still with thrice the strength of a modern floor.... Chelsea is a singular heterogeneous kind of spot, very dirty and contused in some places, quite beautiful in others, abounding in antiquities and the traces of great men--Sir Thomas More, Steele, Smollett, &c. Our Row, which for the last three doors or so is a street, and none of the noblest, runs out upon a 'Parade' (perhaps they call it), running along the shore of the river, a broad highway with huge shady trees, boats lying moored, and a smell of shipping and tan."