midnight
Worthy Mr. Grump lives over him , who is also an ancient inhabitant of the Inn , and who , when Doomsday comes home to read Catullus , is sitting down with three steady seniors of his standing , to a steady rubber at whist , after a dinner at which they have consumed their three steady bottles of Port . You may see the old boys asleep at the Temple Church of a Sunday . Attorneys seldom trouble them , and they have small fortunes of their own . On the other side of the third landing , where Pen and Warrington live , till long after midnight , sits Mr. Paley , who took the highest honors , and who is a fellow of his college , who will sit and read and note cases until two o'clock in the morning ; who will rise at seven and be at the pleader 's chambers as soon as they are open , where he will work until an hour before dinner-time ; who will come home from Hall and read and note cases again until dawn next day , when perhaps Mr. Arthur Pendennis and his friend Mr. Warrington are returning from some of their wild expeditions . How differently employed Mr. Paley has been ! He has not been throwing himself away : he has only been bringing a great intellect laboriously down to the comprehension of a mean subject , and in his fierce grasp of that , resolutely excluding from his mind all higher thoughts , all better things , all the wisdom of philosophers and historians , all the thoughts of poets ; all wit , fancy , reflection , art , love , truth altogether -- so that he may master that enormous legend of the law , which he proposes to gain his livelihood by expounding . Warrington and Paley had been competitors for university honors in former days , and had run each other hard ; and every body said now that the former was wasting his time and energies , while all people praised Paley for his industry .