It was towards the close of the seventeenth century that Chelsea first became socially famous as a pleasant outlet from London; and some of the existing houses belong to that period. A few years later--in the reign of Anne--it was a place of great resort. Hither came the cits by boat, to stare at the curiosities of "Don Saltero's" coffee-house in Cheyne Walk, or to visit the Chelsea China Works, established in Justice Walk by a foreigner, the products of which manufactory (now discontinued a hundred years or thereabouts), still haunt the old shops of the suburb, and command good prices. Here also people flocked to eat buns at the "Old Chelsea Bun-house," which retained a distinguished reputation until its long existence ceased in 1839. Swift mentions these celebrated dainties in the "Journal to Stella," and seems to have had a relish for them, together with a fondness for Chelsea generally, the distance of which from town he measured not only in miles, but in steps. Cheyne Walk is the most characteristic portion of the suburb. Many of the houses are ancient; some are extremely attractive, with their substantial look of old-world liberality and thoroughness, their massive piers and wrought-iron gates, their stone globes and sculptured ornaments, their shadowy trees and draping creepers. The two most interesting of these houses, by reason of the modern associations which mingle with their antiquity, are that formerly occupied by the late Dante Gabriel Rossetti--truly a house of dream and vision--and that where "George Eliot" died, after a brief residence. But the greatest memorial figure in modern Chelsea is that of Thomas Carlyle, who lived for nearly fifty years in Great Cheyne Row, and died there in 1881. The Embankment has altered the character of Cheyne Walk, which looks scarcely so old-fashioned as it did in other days, when the river came up almost to the roadway, and boatmen lounged about on a scrap of beach, ready to take you to Putney or Hammersmith, if you disdained the steamer. There is a scene in one of Miss Thackeray's novels, which portrays, with exquisite delicacy of touch and colouring, the Cheyne Walk of a somewhat recent, yet a bygone, epoch. Still, the alterations have given an added dignity to the place, and a beauty which forbids us to regret the past. The real injury to the old row has proceeded from the bad taste of some of its inhabitants, who have faced and coloured a few of the houses in a way entirely out of keeping with the general character of the neighbourhood.