recognising Carlyle's abilities, welcomed him to the family circle, and
treated him, by his own confession, with a "degree of respect" he "did
not deserve"; adapting their arrangements, as far as possible, to his
hours and habits; consulting his convenience and humouring his whims.
Early in 1823 they went to live together at Kinnaird House, near Dunkeld,
when he continued to write letters to his kin still praising his patrons;
but the first note of discord is soon struck in satirical references to
their aristocratic friends and querulous complaints of the servants.
During the winter, for greater quiet, a room was assigned to him in
another house near Kinnaird; a consideration which met with the award:
"My bower is the most polite of bowers, refusing admittance to no wind
that blows." And about this same time he wrote, growling at his fare: "It
is clear to me that I shall never recover my health under the economy of
Mrs. Buller."

In 1824 the family returned to London, and Carlyle followed in June by
a sailing yacht from Leith. On arrival he sent to Miss Welsh a letter,
sneering at his fellow passengers, but ending with a striking picture of
his first impressions of the capital:--

We were winding slowly through the forest of masts in the
Thames up to our station at Tower Wharf. The giant bustle,
the coal heavers, the bargemen, the black buildings, the ten
thousand times ten thousand sounds and movements of that
monstrous harbour formed the grandest object I had ever
witnessed. One man seems a drop in the ocean; you feel
annihilated in the immensity of that heart of all the world.

On reaching London he first stayed for two or three weeks under Irving's
roof and was introduced to his friends. Of Mrs. Strachey and her young