wonder if anybody'll keep _our_ commandments after we be gone, much less
say, 'Eat, eat, O horse of Abou Kingsley!'"

By this time the success of "Westward Ho!" and "Hypatia" had placed him in
the first rank of English writers. His fame as an author, and his character
as a man, had gained him a position which might well have turned any man's
head. There were those amongst his intimate friends who feared that it
might be so with him, and who were faithful enough to tell him so. And I
cannot conclude this sketch better than by giving his answer to that one
of them with whom he had been most closely associated in the time when, as
Parson Lot, every man's hand had been against him--

"MY DEAR LUDLOW,

"And for this fame, &c.,

"I know a little of her worth.

"And I will tell you what I know,

"That, in the first place, she is a fact, and as such, it is not wise to
ignore her, but at least to walk once round her, and see her back as well
as her front.

"The case to me seems to be this. A man feels in himself the love of
praise. Every man does who is not a brute. It is a universal human faculty;
Carlyle nicknames it the sixth sense. Who made it? God or the devil? Is
it flesh or spirit? a difficult question; because tamed animals grow to
possess it in a high degree; and our metaphysician does not yet allow
them spirit. But, whichever it be, it cannot be for bad: only bad when