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 a gilded inkstand, or an upholstered window?  Starting with the idea that the intellect is all and the body naught but an adjunct or appendage, he will show that the former can live and thrive without any approval of the latter.  He will give the intellect all costly stimulus, and send the body supperless to bed.  Thomas Carlyle taken as a premise, this shabby room is the inevitable conclusion.  Behold the principle.