means; it is certain they cleared San Francisco for the time of the dangerous class, purified the elections, and gave a healthy tone to society.

Within a few years the American newspapers contained a terrible account of the death of a notorious bully and gambler, named Billy Mulligan, then recently released from the Sing-Sing State prison. Law, honour, decency, life, he held in contempt, and his hands were red with the blood of men he had killed. The people then rose against him, and he fled to his own room in the St. Francis Hotel for safety. A boon companion attempted to ascend the stairs, and was instantly killed by the desperado. They sur rounded the house, and watched and waited; they filled the opposite houses and windows with policeThrough his own windows they could see his motions, but dimly; at last the desperate, hunted man approached the window, perhaps to see if his enemies had gone, perhaps tired of his wretched life: then he was shot dead.

men.

Five most destructive fires, too, swept over the city between 1849 and 1851, destroying houses and property to an enormous extent. This loss had to be overcome, and it was a heavy load added to the getting under way.

One of the peculiarities of the earlier population was the absence of females. As far along as 1852 the number of white males was 29,165 to 5,154 females. Add to these the transient people, it would increase the male population to nigh 35,000. This, of course, in a degree explains the early social condition, and it cures itself. In 1860 the disproportion was 33,990 males to 21,636 females; now it is much less.

But the facts of its early history have in a degree given character to the people. It is no longer gross, reckless, immoral; but it is a mate

rial people, bent upon gold, and the things which gold buys; and it grasps at these with an energy and daring that we see nowhere else. What it gets it spends, and not niggardly; it spends it not only upon houses and horses and clothes and pictures, but upon schoolhouses and churches and hospitals, and upon every recognised good thing. During the war it sent its silver and gold by shiploads to succour the wounded, suffering soldiers; it could not do enough to satisfy itself. One evening while Dr. Bellows was there (and he was well known as the President of the United States Sanitary Commission) some dashing fellow cried out, "Whoever wishes to shake hands with Dr. Bellows must pay a dollar to the Sanitary fund." The suggestion took, and so long as the Doctor's arm lasted, so long these free, open-handed people shook it, and shook their dollars into the treasury. The soldiers can never forget the people of California.

The

This free, lavish, fascinating way shows itself among all classes; and the retailer likes to heap up, not strike off, your measure. It shows itself in the dress of the ladies, which is richer, more costly than elsewhere. Jewellery abounds, and is worn to such an extent as to excite the surprise of strangers. carriage and manners of both men and women are affected by this; all tends toward a free, fast way, which in older places would not do. Prudence is not one of the striking virtues of San Francisco; and yet it is a virtue, and one which exists in that city, where may be found some of the most high-minded of men, the most charming of women.

But the bachelor element prevails largely, more than in most cities, and produces results. Restaurant, club, and hotel life tempt married men, and the "home" does not yet rule society. Mr. Bowles, in his admirable book, says: There is

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a want of femininity, of spirituality, in the current tone of the place; more lack of reverence for women than our eastern towns are accustomed to. You hear more than is pleasant of private scandals; of the vanity and weakness of women; of the infidelity of wives." "It is the cursedest place for women," said an observant Yankee citizen, some two or three years from home, and not forgetful yet of mother, sister, and cousin "a town of men and taverns and boarding-houses and billiardsaloons."

On the other hand, a sagacious woman who lived here many years says: "The respect universally shown to women in America, is greater in California than elsewhere, and there is no part of the world in which "fast women" (I do not mean those who are out of the pale of society, but those whose dress or bearing may be considered questionable) are so much disliked. The license of former times has the effect of enforcing strict rules of decorum now. Nowhere have I found people so hospitable, so charitable, and—what is more remarkable-so willing to help those who come among them as workers. There is no mean spirit of jealousy, no dread of rivalry, as we so often find elsewhere, no desire to mislead or throw cold water on enterprise; and nowhere are people so willing to pay a good price for the best of everything."

A word must be said about the Chinese, who already number in California some 80,000. They are smaller than the whites, but are the most patient, laborious, and peaceful class of all, and do a vast amount of work at a small cost. Among them are some large merchants and some very intelligent men; but as a class they are "far down." Among their leading businesses, next to supplying food, are the importation of prostitutes, and the exportation of dead Chinese;

for every one desires to be buried in his own land.

There are no Chinese beggars, for nearly all who come over belong to one of the five great Companies." Each of these has a building, and acts in all respects as a benevolent institution. The word of their merchants is perfectly reliable.

The meanest thing in all Californian civilisation, is and has been the treatment of the Chinese there; perpetrated by the bad, permitted by the good.

Mr. Bowles tells a good story from Ross Browne, which shows how this brown race is crowded by both Christians and Indians, and which may well enough come in here:

"A vagabond Indian comes upon a solitary Chinaman, working over the sands of a deserted gulch for gold. 'Dish is my land,' says he; you pay me fifty dollar.' The poor Celestial turns deprecatingly, saying, 'Melican man (American) been here, took all-no bit left.' Indian irate and fierce: Damn Melican man! you pay me fifty dollar, or I killee you.'

It appears, therefore, that it is quite unsafe to be weak in California, and that Christian white men are more brutal there than heathen Asiatics.

To show how men may and do accumulate wealth when they set themselves about it, look at this abstract of the taxable property of San Francisco, for the year 1866--7:

The annual tax-roll for this year aggregates the value of taxable real estate in San Francisco city and county at 57,880,468 dols.; of personal property, 28,556,806 dols.total so far, 86,437,274 dols. The figures from 1865--66 were: Real estate, 49,137,812 dols.; personal property, 39,129,145 dols.- total 88,266,457 dols. This shows an apparent falling off of 1,823,823 dols., but there is a supplemental assess

IT has long been an admitted principle of criticism in the philosophy of history, that the characters of the actors in history must be judged according to the ideas of their own times. More recently another critical rule has been proclaimed.1 and begins to gain ground, -that whenever we find a character so delineated as to be worse or better than accords with the acknowledged principle of human nature, the excess on either side is to be considered as a proof of historic falsehood. Historical criticism has thus been gradually discarding the portraits of faultless monsters on one hand, and of immoral and unnatural miscreants on the other, from the galleries of the actual past, into the reign of poetry and fiction; where the recorded facts are such as cannot be doubted, and yet seem monstrous, it would have us look upon them as extreme cases of the action of principles common to all mankind. The story of Cleopatra affords such an extreme case to the philosophic historian. What we know of her has come to us only from writers of the nation that hated and feared her. We have from them at best but the picture of the splendid courtezan. The picture equally, perhaps more true, which might have been drawn of her, as the Sovereign struggling to maintain intact the throne and kingdom of her fathers-as the defender of her

country from Roman conquest and annexation-as the patriot, giving up life and worldly fame for that object, was one which they could not draw. The combination of ideas necessary for such a picture was one which a Roman,-believing that all other countries were made only to be plundered by Roman proconsuls, or to furnish tribute that Roman citizens might live untaxed

could not even understand. Dion Cassius and Plutarch are the two chief authorities for her life. Dion has a Quilp-like pleasure in painting every human action, as done from the worst motives. Plutarch can see nothing good out of Greece and Rome, and always takes that view of things which will make a story tell best. Ancient history has but few love-stories; for neither Plutarch, nor any other ancient writer, seems to have dreamt of the intense human interest that may be called forth by a tale of love. Shakspere first saw the part that love played in the life of Cleopatra, and, taking account of it, has come nearer to what seems to be the truth respecting her than professed historians have come. Her history, while it shocks. our modern notions of morality, attracts us by its splendour, and by the world-wide importance of the events connected with it. Its scene is the cradle of human civilisation. There, grouped around her, are the claimants for the throne of the world;

under the shadow of the Pyramids, with the waters of the Nile gliding past, Pompey, Cæsar, Antony, Augustus, close or begin their career of fame.

Egypt's long course of greatness had brought the interest of the chief nations of the world to centre on her shores. The Pharaohs had long since disappeared before the conquering sword of Cambyses, and after centuries of Persian rule the land had succumbed to the Greeks, under Alexander. At Alexander's death, and the partition of his empire among his generals, Egypt fell to Ptolemy,, perhaps the wisest and the best of them. The son of one Lagos, a common Macedonian soldier, his good sense repudiated the flattery which sought to make him an illegitimate son of Philip of Macedon. The people of Rhodes, grateful for timely relief, gave him the name of Ptolemy Soter, or the Saviour; but he rejoiced most in being called Ptolemy Lagos. He finished the building of Alexandria, begun by the Macedonian hero, and contrived that Alexander should be buried there, in one of its most splendid temples. He left the Copts, or ancient Egyptians, free to follow their old absurd worship of animals, and to preserve their habits of caste; and governed the country as a Macedonian King by means Macedonian garrisons. Alexandria, under him, became the next city to Rome in splendour and extent. Settlers from all lands were encouraged; especially Jews, the great traders of the ancient world. He founded the celebrated Academy of Alexandria; its library was unequalled in the number and variety of books, its museum. was the lounge or study, and its revenues the support, of the learned. Under Ptolemy's successors the city grew, the library increased, and learning became fat. The Copts remained submissive; and

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a mixed band of Jews, Macedonians, and other European adventurers, formed a populace for Alexandria, which ruled at its unsettled will the dreamy animal worshippers of the Nile basin. The country was without political institutions. As the Copts lay, without acknowledged rights, at the mercy of their Macedonian conquerors, so these conquerors lay at the mercy of their kings. Every now and then they had recourse to the grand cure for the tyranny of absolute monarchs, rebellion. If a prime minister displeased them, they tore him in pieces; even critics they served in the same way-or roasted alive, a freedom which perhaps some authors would relish even now. Occasionally they varied these political or literary recreations by driving their kings into exile, or whimsically setting up a younger brother in the place of an older. But withal, so much more favourable is freedom unrestrained, than despotism unrestrained, to human advancement, that the trade of the country grew, the wealth of its kings increased, and their power seemed to have no limit but the patience of the Macedonian oligarchy of Alexandrian citizens; for the sleepy Copts yielded tribute in silence, content to preserve their God-bulls, and bury undisturbed their cat and crocodile mummies.

As wealth and luxury increased, the kings of the Lagidean family adopted the custom of Eastern despots, and among them that of intermarrying within their own families-"a barbarous device for unity of possible claimants to the succession." In Egyptian history, sister and queen became almost synonymous terms descriptive of the royal consort, and are used together in proclamations and on coins. Notwithstanding the endurance of this custom for centuries, one king sometimes in succession marrying two of