had
disappeared. And thus, as our readers have doubtless experienced when
they have disturbed the peace of a whole household for the loss of some
portable treasure which they themselves are afterwards discovered to
have mislaid, the unfortunate victim of Paul's honest ingenuity, exposed
to the collected indignation of the spectators, and sinking from the
accuser into the convicted, secretly cursed the unhappy lot which not
only vexed him with the loss of his property, but made it still more
annoying to recover it.

Whether it was that, on discovering these pranks, Mrs. Lobkins trembled
for the future bias of the address they displayed, or whether she
thought that the folly of thieving without gain required speedy and
permanent correction, we cannot decide; but the good lady became at
last extremely anxious to secure for Paul the blessings of a liberal
education. The key of knowledge (the art of reading) she had, indeed,
two years prior to the present date, obtained for him; but this far
from satisfied her conscience,--nay, she felt that if she could not also
obtain for him the discretion to use it, it would have been wise even
to have withheld a key which the boy seemed perversely to apply to all
locks but the right one. In a word, she was desirous that he should
receive an education far superior to those whom he saw around him;
and attributing, like most ignorant persons, too great advantages to
learning, she conceived that in order to live as decorously as the
parson of the parish, it was only necessary to know as much Latin.

One evening in particular, as the dame sat by her cheerful fire, this
source of anxiety was unusually active in her mind, and ever and anon
she directed unquiet and restless glances towards Paul, who sat on
a form at the opposite corner of the hearth, diligently employed in
reading the life and adventures of the celebrated Richard Turpin. The
form on which the boy sat was worn to a glassy smoothness, save only in
certain places, where some ingenious idler or another had amused
himself by carving sundry names, epithets, and epigrammatic niceties of
language. It is said that the organ of carving upon wood is prominently
developed on all English skulls; and the sagacious Mr. Combe has
placed this organ at the back of the head, in juxtaposition to that
of destructiveness, which is equally large among our countrymen, as
is notably evinced upon all railings, seats, temples, and other
things-belongin