I. 1834-1842--When the death of Mrs. Welsh and the late success of Carlyle's work relieved him from a long, sometimes severe, struggle with narrow means. It is the period of the _French Revolution, The Lectures_, and _Hero-Worship_, and of _Chartism_, the last work with a vestige of adherence to the Radical creed. II. 1842-1853--When the death of his mother loosened his ties to the North. This decade of his literary career is mainly signalised by the writing and publication of the _Life and Letters of Cromwell_, of Carlyle's political works, _Past and Present_ and the _Latter-Day Pamphlets_, and of the _Life of Sterling_, works which mark his now consummated disbelief in democracy, and his distinct abjuration of adherence, in any ordinary sense, to the "Creed of Christendom." III. 1853-1866--When the laurels of his triumphant speech as Lord Rector at Edinburgh were suddenly withered by the death of his wife. This period is filled with the _History of Friedrick II._, and marked by a yet more decidedly accentuated trust in autocracy. IV. 1866-1881.--Fifteen years of the setting of the sun. The Carlyles, coming to the metropolis in a spirit of rarely realised audacity on a reserve fund of from L200 to L300 at most, could not propose to establish themselves in any centre of fashion. In their circumstances their choice of abode was on the whole a fortunate one. Chelsea, Not wholly in the busy world, nor quite Beyond it, was, even in those days of less constant communication, within measurable distance of the centres of London life: it had then and still preserves a host of interesting historic and literary traditions. Among the men who in old times lived or met together in that outlying region of London, we have memories of Sir Thomas More and of Erasmus, of the Essayists Addison and Steele, and of Swift. Hard by is the tomb of Bolingbroke and the Square of Sir Hans Sloane; Smollett lived for a time in Laurence Street; nearer our own day, Turner resided in Cheyne Walk, later George Eliot, W.B. Scott, Dante Rossetti, Swinburne for a season, and George Meredith. When Carlyle came to settle there, Leigh Huntin Upper Cheyne Row, an almost next-door neighbour, was among the first of a series of visitors; always welcome, despite his "hugger-mugger" household and his borrowing tendencies, his "unpractical messages" and "rose-coloured reform processes," as a bright "singing bird, musical in flowing talk," abounding in often subtle criticisms and constant good humour. To the Chelsea home, since the Mecca of many pilgrims, there also flocked other old Ampton Street friends, drawn thither by genuine regard, Mrs. Carlyle, by the testimony of Miss Cushman and all competent judges, was a "_raconteur_ unparalleled." To quote the same authority, "that wonderful woman, able to live in the full light of Carlyle's genius without being overwhelmed by it," had a peculiar skill in drawing out the most brilliant conversationalist of the age.