A boy's reputation for abilities soon gets known, but he must possess no ordinary ones to be able to distinguish himself in a college where every victory in erudition is sure to be achieved by a well-contested battle.
We passed through the quarter of Paris known as the Pays Latin, the aspect of which is singular, and is said to have been little changed during the last century.

The houses, chiefly occupied by literary men, look quaint and picturesque.

Every man one sees passing has the air of an author, not as authors now are, or at least as popular ones are, well-clothed and prosperous-looking, but as authors were when genius could not always command a good wardrobe, and walked forth in habiliments more derogatory to the age in which it was neglected, than to the individual whose poverty compelled such attire.
Men in rusty threadbare black, with books under the arm, and some with spectacles on nose, reading while they walked along, might be encountered at every step.
The women, too, in the Pays Latin, have a totally different aspect to those of every other part of Paris.

The desire to please, inherent in the female breast, seems to have expired in them, for their dress betrays a total neglect, and its fashion is that of some forty years ago.

Even the youthful are equally negligent, which indicates their conviction that the men they meet seldom notice them, proving the truth of the old saying, that women dress to please men.
The old, with locks of snow, who had grown into senility in this erudite quarter, still paced the same promenade which they had trodden for many a year, habit having fixed them where hope once led their steps.