r than house and land. 'Doctrina sed vim,' etc.
You know what old Horace says? Why, sir, you would not believe it; but
I was the man who killed his Majesty the King of Sardinia in our
yesterday's paper. Nothing is too arduous for genius. Fag hard, my
boy, and you may rival (for the thing, though difficult, may not be
impossible) Augustus Tomlinson!"

At the conclusion of this harangue, a knock at the door being heard,
Paul took his departure, and met in the hall a fine-looking person
dressed in the height of the fashion, and wearing a pair of prodigiously
large buckles in his shoes. Paul looked, and his heart swelled. "I may
rival," thought he,--"those were his very words,--I may rival (for
the thing, though difficult, is not impossible) Augustus Tomlinson!"
Absorbed in meditation, he went silently home. The next day the memoirs
of the great Turpin were committed to the flames, and it was noticeable
that henceforth Paul observed a choicer propriety of words, that he
assumed a more refined air of dignity, and that he paid considerably
more attention than heretofore to the lessons of Mr. Peter MacGrawler.
Although it must be allowed that our young hero's progress in the
learned languages was not astonishing, yet an early passion for reading,
growing stronger and stronger by application, repaid him at last with a
tolerable knowledge of the mother-tongue. We must, however, add that his
more favourite and cherished studies were scarcely of that nature which
a prudent preceptor would have greatly commended. They lay chiefly among
novels, plays, and poetry,--which last he affected to that degree
that he became somewhat of a poet himself. Nevertheless these literary
avocations, profitless as they seemed, gave a certain refinement to his
tastes which they were not likely otherwise to have acquired at the Mug;
and while they aroused his ambition to see something of the gay life
they depicted, they imparted to his temper a tone of enterprise and of
thoughtless generosity which perhaps contributed greatly to counteract
those evil influences towards petty vice to which the examples
around him must have exposed his tender youth. But, alas! a great
disappointment to Paul's hope of assistance and companionship in his
literary labours befell him. Mr. Augustus Tomlinson, one bright morning,
disappeared, leaving word with his numerous friends that he was going
to accept a lucrative situation in the North of England. Notwithstanding
the sh