We find ourselves in a dismal labyrinth of narrow, winding streets, now and then issuing into some open space before a guild-hall or a church. The objects which meet our gaze in this strange city do not solicit pause or reflection; for we have seen essentially the same type of homes and humanity in many another city which we have wandered through in our search for the stone of wisdom. We therefore continue on our way. The buildings of the university are said to be in the neighborhood, and we turn the corner to the right, and again to the left, until we come upon it. The lecture-hour approaches. Professors draped in stiff mantles and wearing the scholastic cap on their supremely wise foreheads, wend their way to the temples of knowledge at the portals of which flocks of students wait. We recognize their various and familiar types: the new-matriculated look as usual, their cheeks still retaining the glow of early youth, their hearts still humble, perhaps still held captive by the sweet delusion that the walls by which they wait are the propylæa to all the secrets of earth and heaven. Just as readily recognized are the parchment-worms, destined one day to shine as lights in the Church and in the domain of science, whether they now toil themselves pale and melancholic over their _catenæ_, their _summæ_ and _sententiæ_, or bear with unfeigned self-satisfaction the precious weight of _terms_ which lifts them so conspicuously above the ignorant mass of mortals. And among the throng of the first named still fresh with youth, and these already dried pedants, we find also the far-famed third class of students, adventurers assembled from all quarters under the protection of university-privileges,--those gentlemen with bearded cheek, and faces swelled by drinking and scarred by combat, with terribly long and broad swords dangling at their side,--the heroes of that never ending Iliad which the apprentices of learning and the guilds enact nightly in the darkness of the lanes, who may yet turn out some day the most pious of conventical priors, the gravest doctors and the very severest burgomasters in Christendom, unless before that time they meet their fate upon the gallows, or on the field of battle, or as _scholares vagantes_ in the ditch or by the roadside.