Caucasian neighbours. Their favourite articles of diet are Their favourite articles of diet are fish and pork, rice and tea, cooked over open braziers, and eaten with chop-sticks. But rarely do they depart from the costume of their native land-the cork-soled cloth shoes, flowing trousers, light blue cotton blouses, very loose and hanging down to the knees, with immense sleeves, and singular Oriental hats. The wealthy merchants are usually clad in rich silks and cassimeres. The women wear clothing which differs from these only in being more voluminous, and usually of fine materials.

In one respect, at least, the Chinaman has been civilised up to the Californian levelhe gambles in the most reckless and dissolute manner, and evades the stringent municipal laws on this subject by skilfully concealing the places where the games are in operation. Next to this dangerous amusement, he loves the two theatres, where crude performances are given by companies of Chinese actors (there are no actresses), a single drama requiring sometimes a hundred nights for its completion. In this land of intemperates it is a very rare thing to see a drunken Chinaman, but the substitute used by these Asiatics is worse than the fiery liquor of their white neighbours. It is opium, whose delicious dreams enchant the persecuted race, huddled by scores in the dark and dingy opium-dens.

The Six Chinese Companies are protective and charitable organisations, including all the Chinamen on the Pacific Coast in their membership, and each provided with an office in San Francisco. They advance the funds for the passage-money of immigrants, take care of the sick and the dead, and supervise the labours of their countrymen. On one occasion, after an anti-Chinese mass-meeting, the presidents of the Six Companies sent a very dignified defence of their people to the President of the United States. In some sort, too, these Companies endeavour to obtain that rarest of all Californian commodities -justice-remembering that the government of the city is (as one of its chief newspapers has phrased it) "an institution to be placated with backsheesh rather than an organisation for the maintenance of society."

The Tong Fan Asoon Po (The Oriental) is a weekly newspaper, printed from a lithographic stone, and having a circulation of 700 among the Chinese of San Francisco. It contains abstracts of the news gleaned from its Trans-Pacific exchanges, local items, and editorials upon subjects of present interest. Everything is printed in the strange Chinese characters, associated in the European mind mainly with tea-chests.

Chinatown, where most of these unfortunate aliens live, covers about nine blocks, adjoining the gloomy precincts of Barbary Coast, and here the yellow men are crowded into narrow and filthy quarters, hundreds of them in a single house, surrounded by poisonous masses of all manner of refuse, and violating every hygienic law, yet singularly healthy and vigorous withal. Every visitor to San Francisco is taken to visit this strange foreign faubourg, and its idol-temples, theatres, and opium-dens. It is the Ghetto of the West.

Among the Asiatic inhabitants of the city there are devotees of three faiths: those of Confucius, Buddha, and Lao-Tsze; and they support six joss-houses, or places of worshipdark, incense-stifled rooms, each having from three to twelve idols, secluded in alcoves, before which are placed tables for meat-offerings, and boxes in which fragrant sandalwood perpetually burns. The favourite divinities appear to be the "god of the Sombre Heavens," the "god of Medicine," the "god of War," and the "god of Wealth.” The

peculiar earnestness of the adoration of the two last-named shows that these pagans are not incapable of apprehending the root-ideas of Anglo-American civilisation. The priests of the shrines are comfortably supported by the sale of devotional objects. The great festival is at their New Year's Day, which occurs late in February, and fills the Chinese quarter with strange heathen revels, fantastic draperies, many-coloured lanterns of singular shapes, and placards inscribed with vivid and mysterious texts. The misery and squalor of the lanes are hidden beneath gay-coloured bunting; and every one is out, calling on his friends and kinspeople.

During the last days of the old year,

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all accounts are closed and all debts paid Confucian custom, which might be introduced without detriment in London and New York. Every one seems happy and mirthful -the shops are closed-thousands of Chinamen from the inland towns join. in the celebration-the theatres and restaurants, the opium-dens and gambling-houses, are crowded-and the streets are brilliant with richly-robed Mongolian aristocrats, and women and children with painted faces. In order to frighten away the evil spirits, so that the new year may begin auspiciously, a continuous and unendurable racket is made with bombs, firecrackers, gongs, kettle-drums, and fiddles. About two months later comes the festival of Tsing Ming ("the Pure and Resplendent"), when it is believed that the spirits of the dead re-visit the earth, and wonderful feasts are prepared for them, while their graves are renovated and put in order. When a Chinaman dies, he is said to "salute the age," or to "ascend to the sky," and elaborate pagan rites are celebrated at the tomb.

The American Christians have recognised the hand of God in bringing these idolaters within the jurisdiction of the Church, and many efforts have been made to evangelise them. The Roman Catholics make earnest attacks upon their pagan doctrines; and the Presbyterians and Methodists also have achieved a certain measure of success. Several hundred Californian Chinamen have become intelligent church-members, and their Young Men's Christian Association includes upwards of 500 men. There are nearly a score of mission-schools in the city, and two successful houses of refuge for reformed Chinawomen.

But where he may find dozens of perfunctory friends, the man of Asia must encounter also hundreds of bitter and lawless antagonists. The "hoodlum" is the natural enemy of the Chinaman, and his cowardly and merciless persecutor-the terror of the streets at night, the insulter of women, the robber of peaceably-disposed citizens, the foe of the

police. He is of the same type and race as the "larikkin" of Australia—an overgrown boy or dissolute young man, grown up without the sweet influences of home and mother, averse to labour, haunting the corner-groceries and dark alleys, and always plotting new mischiefs or consummating ingenious devilries. When a Chinaman passes a gang of these distorted abortions of civilisation, it is inevitable that they shall pull him down by his queue, hammer him with their fists, or shower him with a volley of stones-deeming such treatment of a heathen and an alien as one of the proud duties of their American citizenship.

For many years California was a great Alsatia, whither the outcasts of all nations. found refuge; and the "road-agents" of the mining counties, as desperate and as chivalrous as the highwaymen of Hounslow Heath and the Spanish robbers on the southern roads, as cruel as Greek banditti, still perpetuate the memory of the exiled canaille of New York, London, and Mexico. The hoodlum, however, is a product of the soil-a young man, excluded from lowly labour by Chinese competition, and from skilled artisanship by trades-unionism, and left to idle about the streets, armed to the teeth, proficient in all vices and crimes, the scourge of the city, the despair of the philanthropist, and a warning to England.

It needs not to be stated that in a city made up of such elements as are found here, and where the hotel is paramount over the home, the theatre is one of the most favoured institutions. The California Theatre and the opera-houses are large and luxurious structures; and the minor variety-theatres command a profitable patronage as well. Many of the best actors and singers in the world have visited this far-off capital, as a midway house between New York and Australia, and their engagements have been very successful. Wade's Opera-House has sittings for 3,000 people, and sometimes there are even 4,000 auditors, when some special attraction is given.

In Woodward's Gardens the San Franciscan finds the "Zoo," the Agricultural Hall, and the Brighton Aquarium united, and he pays but a shilling for all this combination of joys. Here is the grand pavilion, seating 5,000 people, with a polished floor for dancing, skating, and various droll plays and contests; the observatory, overlooking the city and harbour; the museum, crowded with Verreux's (of Paris) choicest natural history specimens, a full collection of Japanese minerals, and countless Pacific Coast curiosities; the art-gallery, with numerous paintings and sculptures; the Zoological Gardens, where living tigers, bears, jaguars, camels, and other animals dwell in roaring discontent; the race-course, a great amphitheatre for chariot and foot races; the aquarium and the seal-ponds, the bear-pit and deer-park, the aviary and conservatories. Around these popular resorts there are trees and shubberies, flowers and lawns, hillocks and grottoes, lakelets and fountains, pagodas and rustic seats, and other means of diverting the urban youth, and attracting their seniors.

The later pioneers were not so exclusively devoted to adventure and money-making as to neglect the more refined pleasures of literature. The Mercantile Library contains 50,000 volumes, and owns a large and handsome building near the centre of the city. Its readingroom is supplied with scores of various magazines and reviews, a hundred newspapers from the Atlantic States, a hundred and fifty from the Pacific Coast, and files from the Sandwich Islands and the Cape of Good Hope. A small annual contribution entitles one to the use

of these. The Mechanics' Institute has a library of 30,000 volumes, which is continually enriched from the money made at the great Industrial Exhibitions. The Odd Fellows also have a collection of 25,000 volumes; and several other societies are provided with large and growing libraries.

The historian of the Pacific Coast, "the Cæsar Augustus of Américanistes," is Mr. Hubert H. Bancroft, formerly a San Francisco publisher, who has ransacked the world for books and MSS. pertaining to this region, and now possesses a library of 20,000 volumes of Californiana, besides myriads of documents and papers. With a large corps of assistants, he has been engaged for years in the preparation of a huge many-volumed book on the native races of the Pacific Coast, and a systematic history of the territory and State of California. In the quest for original papers, Mr. Bancroft has made repeated visits to London, Paris, Madrid, Rome, and Vienna; and he secured 3,000 volumes from the Biblioteca Imperial de Mejico of the Emperor Maximilian.

The Overland Monthly, which ran a short career, from 1868 to 1875, was the medium through which many literary citizens reflected the wild, free sentiment of the Pacific slope. Bret Harte was the editor, and among the local contributors were men whose fame is now world-wide-Mark Twain, Joaquin Miller, Charles W. Stoddard, and others -working in similar veins of sentiment, but with widely different manners. Boston and New York soon perceived the rare merit of these Pacific Coast authors, and lured them away from this sweet Laodicean climate; and London, in its turn, admired and received them. They are better known now in Paternoster Row than in Kearney Street; and the Californian, the successor of the Overland Monthly, is fostering a new brood of geniuses.

There certainly have been but few communities of such brief existence which could point to so many eminent authors as their own, or show native schools of literature so original, piquant, and powerful. Poetry grows on this soil as freely and luxuriantly as among the hills of Scotland; history has found devoted students and annalists; and philology has made some of its most interesting discoveries in this cosmopolitan community. The newspapers of the city are vigorous and fearless, and continually report the tidings of the round world, and all that dwell therein. A keen observer remarks that the journalists of San Francisco include "graduates of all universities from Aberdeen to Rome, and graduates of those famous foundations, the School of Adversity, the Academy of Audacity." There is, indeed, a wide range between the dignified conservatism of the Alta, the Bulletin, and the Examiner, and the enterprising sensationalism of the Chronicle, the Call, and the Post-between the dull solemnity of the sectarian weeklies and the stinging quips of the News-Letter, the Parisian sparkle of the Courrier Français.

In the broad field of art, this community has made a really notable progress; and its chief painters, Hill, Keith, Rosenthal, and Virgil Williams, are held in high esteem among American artists. The grand scenery of the Sierras and the coast, the brilliancy of the Western skies and landscapes, have afforded abundant resources for the development of a new school of painting, which may produce notable results in the next century. The San Francisco Art Association has several hundred members, and often gives exhibitions of paintings. It also maintains a school of design, and a growing collection of casts from antique statuary. Such enlightening agencies may render impossible repetitions of the droll

incident reported in one of the local newspapers, and gleefully re-published in the Eastern journals. It is said that a rich mining speculator sent to Florence for a copy of the Venus de Milo, and when it arrived he sued the Central Pacific Railway for mutilating a work of art, and the jury awarded him heavy damages!

The theology which has prevailed in San Francisco (and may be destined to remain yet longer) is illustrated in a scrap from one of the local dialect-stories, representing a dialogue between a learned divine and a rugged old teamster:-"Mr. Small, do not you believe in the overruling providence of God?' 'Which god?' "There is but one God.' 'I don't see it, parson. On this yere Pacific Coast gods is numerous-Chinee gods, Mormon gods, Injin gods, Christian gods, an' The Bank of Californy." There are hopeful indications, however, that the careless indifferentism, the intense secularism, of the early days is passing away, to be replaced by a well-ordered condition of Christian civilisation, vigorous in growth, and blossoming in charities and philanthropies. The Methodists, Roman Catholics, Episcopalians, and Presbyterians, each have about a dozen churches here; the Lutherans, Baptists, and Independents each have half as many; and several smaller sects also have their places of worship. Chief in interest among these buildings are the Unitarian church, the scene of the famous Starr King's ministry; the Catholic Cathedral, a stately (but not large) Gothic building; Grace Church, the chief Anglican shrine; the Mission Dolores, the ancient church of the Franciscan Fathers, erected in 1776 of adobes, or sun-dried bricks; and the Synagogue of Emanuel, whose quaint Oriental towers are conspicuous in all views of the city. Connected with these churches, or the outgrowth of the same spirit, are numerous hospitals and asylums for various classes of needy and unfortunate persons, the orphans, the widows, the sick. The exact number of the fixed sittings in the San Francisco churches is close upon 45,000, which are thus divided: Roman Catholic, 9,300; Presbyterian, 7,700; Methodists, 5,200; Episcopalian, 5,000; Hebrew, 4,500; Baptist, 4,000; Independent, 3,800; and miscellaneous, 5,500. The vicinity of Union Square, in the older part of the city, contains several of the most important churches, and has therefore been likened to the Leonine quarter of Rome. The rapid extension of the cable-tramways, however, draws the people more and more towards the outskirts of the city, and the modern churches are built in the new wards. There is also a Young Men's Christian Association, owning a handsome stone building down town, with the customary comforts of library and reading-room, gymnasium, and halls. The Masons and Odd Fellows possess commodious buildings in the heart of the city, from which ceaseless benefactions pour forth.

The religion of the Spanish settlers was of the Roman variety in its most pronounced form, but the priest at the Mission, Padre Santillan, departed as soon as the American flag was raised, and the first regular non-Catholic services were those of the Mormons, who used to assemble upon the ringing of a hand-bell in the public square. In 1849, however, the Independents founded a church; and a year later, within the grey old walls of Rome, Alemany was consecrated as first bishop of the remote diocese of California. About the same time the Episcopalians of the East ordained a bishop of their own faith, and sent him to the Pacific, not without hopes of a cathedral in the new vineyards of civilisation.

The ancient buildings of Mission Dolores are still in existence, about two miles from the centre of the city, and serve a useful purpose as a Roman Catholic chapel. Whatever