for it by such pecuniary consolations as he was enabled to offer. These
MacGrawler (purely, we may suppose, from a benevolent desire to lessen
the boy's remorse) scrupled not to accept; and thus, so similar often are
the effects of virtue and of vice, the exemplary MacGrawler conspired
with the unprincipled Long Ned and the heartless Henry Finish in
producing that unenviable state of vacuity which now saddened over the
pockets of Paul.

As our hero was slowly walking towards the sage's abode, depending on his
gratitude and friendship for a temporary shelter, one of those lightning
flashes of thought which often illumine the profoundest abyss of
affliction darted across his mind. Recalling the image of the critic, he
remembered that he had seen that ornament of "The Asinaeum" receive
sundry sums for his critical lucubrations.

"Why," said Paul, seizing on that fact, and stopping short in the
street,--"why should I not turn critic myself?"

The only person to whom one ever puts a question with a tolerable
certainty of receiving a satisfactory answer is one's self. The moment
Paul started this luminous suggestion, it appeared to him that he had
discovered the mines of Potosi. Burning with impatience to discuss with
the great MacGrawler the feasibility of his project, he quickened his
pace almost into a run, and in a very few minutes, having only overthrown
one chimney-sweeper and two apple-women by the way, he arrived at the
sage's door.