THERE are few things on which we reflect with more honest pride than the circumstance that we have never quitted our native county-we might almost say parish-where we have lived under all sorts of dispensations, content to mark the changes that have occurred from the old monarchical days of George III. to these liberal, democratic, Palmerstonian times, when the voice of the people, conveyed through some sonorous premier or first speaking-trumpet, is listened to as the utterance of an indisputable ruling power, which some think celestial, some infernal. In a sequestered nook of a sequestered county we have grown from youth to age a reverend hermit. Here we have taken root, marrying early in life the daughter of a neighbour, and bringing up a large family. From figuring in most of the capacities which our laws allot to a citizengrand juryman, sheriff, church-warden, magistrate, and militia officerwe are acquainted with the constitution of this country practically, as well as theoretically in the roseate pictures of Blackstone and De Lolme. We have parochial business at our finger-ends; many lawsuits with churchmen of various grades have given us an insight into ecclesiastical polity; and our inborn propensities of naturalist and sportsman have made us familiar with the topographical, botanical, zoological, and geological peculiarities of the surrounding district, as will be found some day, when a certain book, the labour of a lifetime-containing our discoveries, facts, and speculations, in a complete history of the shire, which is intended for posthumous publication shall be given to the world.

Knowing then, or fancying that we know, a good deal about one spot of the earth's surface, it is most exasperating to us to be obliged to feel insignificant in the presence of some beardless traveller, returning to spend a short phase of his migratory exist

ence in his and our native parish, whom we know for an ass, as we did his father and grandfather before him. It is difficult to imagine what charm travel can have for men without reverence, reading, or observant power. Classical celebrities, over whose fields of fame they have wandered, are remembered by them chiefly as bricks-they have a distinct recollection of the tomb of an Egyptian monarch of the Nimroud period, because they played blind hookey on the lid of his sarcophagus; but except such mementos of travel, and pencillings by the way, they return, just as wise as they went, to revile conscientious citizens like ourself as precious slow old coaches, with deuced narrow-minded ideas, and fearfully behind the age. their society we feel glad that we have never been up the Rhine nor across the Alps-that the forty centuries on the top of the Pyramids have never looked down upon us

In

- that Rome still sits, in our imagination, on her seven hills, with no Cockney in the foreground-in fact, that we have never felt the impulse which is making the AngloSaxons a vast nomadic tribe, sending them forth to the points of the compass, restless as Mother Carey's chickens, or bees that have lost their queen, to grow more stupid the longer they stare, and generally to benefit nothing by their travels except their native land, which is probably all the better for their absence.

Probably these will be looked on as the opinions of a crabbed old gentleman, bilious from much port, and disgusted with the age which has left him so hopelessly behind. Nothing of the sort. When we meet a traveller of the right stamp, nobody enjoys his talk or his writing more than we. By the right stamp we mean a natural aptitude for dispensing with conventionalities, an open conciliatory temper, a habit of making the best of everything, a talent for roughing it, and a knack of detecting the

the easier, but more tedious, passage round Cape Horn."

Mr Borthwick set out from New York for California in May 1851, and after a voyage, the privations of which are amusingly described, was set ashore at Chagres, along with a great number of free and enlightened citizens, on golden thoughts intent, some of whom are depicted under the following agreeable aspect :--

"It was very amusing to watch the change which had been coming over some of the men on board. They seemed to shrink within themselves, and to wish to avoid being included in any of the small parties which were being formed to make the passage up the river. They were those who had provided themselves with innumerable contrivances for the protection of their precious persons against sun, wind, and rain, also with extraordinary assortments of very untempting-looking provisions, and who were completely equipped with pistols, knives, and other warlike implements. They were like so many Robinson Crusoes, ready to be put ashore on a desert island; and they seemed to imagine themselves to be in just such a predicament, fearful, at the same time, that companionship with any one not provided with the same amount of rubbish as themselves, might involve their losing the exclusive benefit of what they supposed so absolutely necessary. I actually heard one of them refuse another man a chew of tobacco, saying he guessed he had no more than what he could use himself."

From Chagres he performed an arduous and interesting voyage up the river to Panama, where he embarked in a sailing vessel, and, after a passage of many tedious weeks, reached San Francisco on the threshhold of the gold country a city bearing so strong a resemblance to Bunyan's town of Vanity as fully to attest the strength and truth of the imagination of him who drew the allegorical picture. Here human nature is seen naked, unchained, and flushed almost to delirium by draughts from the fountain-head of gold-an academy where students of humanity may draw from unveiled models. He of philosophic eye, who has dwelt in San Francisco, must ever after, we should think, walk among his species with a sense that he knows the respectabilities he meets far

better than they know themselves, haunted as his thoughts ever must be by the recollections of Pandemonium, and his ears ringing as they ever must ring with the wild demonchorus that underlies "the still sad music of humanity."

"San Francisco exhibited an immense

amount of vitality compressed into a small compass, and a degree of earnest. ness was observable in every action of a man's daily life. People lived more there in a week than they would in a year in most other places.

"In the course of a month, or a year, in San Francisco, there was more hard work done, more speculative schemes were conceived and executed, more money was made and lost, there was more buying and selling, more sudden changes of fortune, more eating and drinking, more smoking, swearing, gambling, and tobacco-chewing, more crime and profligacy, and, at the same time, more solid advancement made by the people, as a body, in wealth, prosperity, and the refinements of civilisation, than could be shown in an equal space of time by any community of the same size on the face of the earth.

"The every-day jog-trot of ordinary human existence was not a fast enough pace for Californians in their impetuous pursuit of wealth. The longest period of time ever thought of was a month. Money was loaned, and houses were rented, by the month; interest and rent being invariably payable monthly and in advance. All engagements were made by the month, during which period the changes and contingencies were so great that no one was willing to commit himself for a longer term. In the space of a month the whole city might be swept off by fire, and a totally new one might be flourishing in its fluctuation in the prices of goods, and place. So great was the constant so rash and speculative was the usual style of business, that no great idea of stability could be attached to anything, and the ever-varying aspect of the streets, as the houses were being constantly pulled down and rebuilt, was emblematic of the equally varying fortunes of the inhabitants.

intense bustle and excitement. "The streets presented a scene of

The goods, in front of the already crowded side-walks were blocked up with piles of stores; men hurried along with the air of having the weight of all the business of California on their shoulders; others stood in groups at the corners of the

was ankle-deep, and in many places there were mud holes, rendering the street almost impassable. The streets were the general receptacle for every description of rubbish. They were chiefly covered with bits of broken boxes and casks, fragments of hampers, iron hoops, old tin cases, and empty bottles. In the vicinity of the numerous Jew slop-shops, they were thickly strewed with old boots, hats, coats, and pantaloons; for the majority of the population carried their wardrobe on their backs, and when they bought a new article of dress, the old one which it was to replace was pitched into the street."

Gambling at home, though it displays the passions as broadly as it does elsewhere, is carried on too covertly, and is too much opposed to public opinion, to tinge visibly the general character of the community. But in San Francisco it is an institution, and its temples take precedence of all others while the devotees exhibit the most picturesque variety of appearance.

"The gambling-saloons were very numerous, occupying the most prominent positions in the leading thoroughfares, and all of them presenting a more conspicuous appearance than the generality of houses around them. They were thronged day and night, and in each was a very good band of music, the performers being usually German or French.

"On entering a first-class gamblingroom, one found a large well-propor tioned saloon sixty or seventy feet long, brilliantly lighted up by several very fine chandeliers, the walls decorated with ornamental painting and gilding, and hung with large mirrors and showy pictures, while in an elevated projecting orchestra half-a-dozen Germans were

playing operatic music. There were a dozen or more tables in the room, each with a compact crowd of eager betters around it, and the whole room was so filled with men that elbowing one's way between the tables was a matter of difficulty. The atmosphere was quite hazy with the quantity of tobacco smoke, and was strong ly impregnated with the fumes of brandy. If one happened to enter while the musicians were taking a rest, the quiet and stillness were remarkable. Nothing was heard but a slight hum of voices, and the constant chinking of money; for it was the fashion, while standing betting at a table, to have a lot of dollars in one's hands, and to keep shuffling them backwards and forwards like so many cards.

The people composing the crowd were men of every class, from the highest to the lowest, and, though the same as might be seen elsewhere, their extraordinary variety of character and of dress appeared still more curious from their being brought into such close juxtaposition, and apparently placed upon an equality. Seated round the same table might be seen well-dressed respectable-looking men, and, alongside of them, rough miners fresh from the diggings, with well-filled buckskin purses, dirty old flannel shirts, and shapeless hats; jolly tars half-seas-over, not understanding anything about the game, nor apparently taking any interest in it, but having their spree out at the gaminggood-humouredly losing their pile of five or six hundred or a thousand dollars; Mexicans wrapped up in their blankets smoking cigaritas, and watching the game intently from under their broad-brimmed hats; Frenchmen in their blouses smoking black pipes; and little urchins, or little old scamps rather, ten or twelve years of age, smoking cigars as big as themselves with the air of men who were quite up to all the hooks and crooks of this wicked world (as indeed they were), and losing their hundred dollars at a pop with all the nonchalance of an old gambler; while crowds of men, some dressed like gentlemen, and mixed with all sorts of nondescript ragamuffins, crowded round, and stretched over those seated at the tables, in order to make their bets.

table because it was the fashion, and

"There were dirty, squalid, villanouslooking scoundrels, who never looked straight out of their eyes, but still were always looking at something, as if they were making a note of it,' and who could have made their faces their fortunes in some parts of the world, by 'sitting for murderers or ruffians generally.'

"Occasionally one saw, jostled about unresistingly by the crowd, and as if the crowd ignored its existence, the live carcass of some wretched, dazed, woe-begone man, clad in the worn-out greasy habiliments of quondam gentility; the glassy unintelligent eye looking as if no focus could be found for it, but as if it saw a dim misty vision of everything all at once; the only meaning in the face being about the lips, where still lingered the smack of grateful enjoyment of the last mouthful of whisky, blended with a longing humble sigh for the speedy recurrence of any opportunity of again experiencing such an awakening bliss, and forcibly expressing an unquenchable thirst for strong drinks, together with