The first impression of the Student of Students in Paris is one of curiosity. "When do the students find time to study?" is the natural inquiry. The next impression solves the mystery, by leading to the satisfactory conclusion, that the students do _not_ find time to study. To be sure, eminent physicians, great painters, and acute lawyers, do occasionally throw sufficient light upon society to render its intellectual darkness visible. And the probabilities are that these physicians are not born with diplomas, as children are, occasionally, with cauls; nor the painters sent into the world with their pencils at their fingers' ends; nor the lawyers launched into existence sitting upon innate woolsacks. The inference, then, is, that education has done something toward their advancement, and that they, necessarily, have done something toward their education. But the lives of great men are the lives of individuals, not of masses. And with these I have nothing now to do. It is possible that the Quartier Latin contains at the present moment more than one "mute inglorious" Moliere, or Paul de Kock, guiltless, as yet, of his readers' demoralization. Many a young man who now astonishes the Hôtel Corneille, less by his brains than his billiards, may one day work hard at a barricade, and harder still, subsequently, at the galleys! But how are we to know that these young fellows, with their long legs, short coats, and faces patched over with undecided beards, are geniuses, unless, as our excellent friend, the English plebeian has it, they "behave as such?" Let us hope, at any rate, that, like glow-worms, they appear mean and contemptible in the glare of society, only to exhibit their shining qualities in the gloom of their working hours. It is only, then, with the outward life of the students that I have to deal. With this, one may become acquainted without a very long residence in the Quartier Latin--that happy quarter where every thing is subservient to the student's taste, and accommodated to the student's pocket--where amusement is even cheaper than knowledge--where braces are unrespected, and blushes unknown--where gloves are not enforced, and respectability has no representative.