ubim is king of the whole earth, and that he doeth what he will in the armies of heaven and among the children of men, cannot help seeing the same hand which destroyed the Tower of Babel in the plains of Shinar, the same power routing the legions, and scattering like the small dust of the threshing floor the flaunting eagles on the plains of Waterloo. And here is the one great lesson of our subject. God will permit no towering Babel to overshadow his sin-stricken but redeemed world. is he who hath decreed that nations shall dwell separately; it is he who hath appointed the bounds of their habitation. CALIFORNIA SIX YEARS AGO. THREE It HREE years in California is the title of a new work recently published in London. The author, Mr. Borthwick, was a victim to that peculiar disease the "gold fever." The fever seized him in 1851; he fled from a pleasant life and a comfortable home; dashed off from New-York for Chagres, became very sea-sick en route, but he did not repent-at least he does not say so-and was landed at length safely in San Francisco. The city, six years ago, was in a much more primitive state than at present. Manners and morals were at a low ebb. Every man then carried his revolver or his bowie-knife, quarreled with his neighbor or was quarreled with, and had no other alternative open to him but to murder, or be murdered. The city was divided between gambling booths, drinking saloons, theaters, and thieves; a crop of villains, too, of the most accomplished class, was plentiful; while the vices and depravities of civilization, flavored with the spice of thorough unrestraint, were reveled in with savage greediness. Never was there such a pandemonium as San Francisco exhibited six years ago, nor such a remarkable instance of a commerce arising so purely speculative, profitable, and generally successful. He says: "San Francisco exhibited an immense amount of vitality compressed into a small compass, and a degree of earnestness 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, chewing, more crime and profligacy, and, at the more smoking, swearing, gambling, and tobaccosame time, more solid advancement made by the people, as a body, in wealth, prosperity, and the refinements of civilization, 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; interést and rent being invariably payable monthly and in advance. All engagements were made by the month, during which period the changes and coutingencies 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 place. So great was the constant fluctuation in the price of goods, and 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 em blematic of the equally varying fortunes of the inhabitants." There was no order, honesty, safety, or police, and the only law that of selfdefense, or mob justice. In such a city robbery and murder were rife, revenge common, and vice predominant. But in all congregations of men, however depraved, however madly resolved to maintain themselves free from all restraint, the profound truth that it is better to live under any authority than under none, strikes their convictions, and sooner or later insures a prompt and decisive result. The great social necessities, "law and order," come to the surface, and after a brief struggle are indelibly stamped upon the society, and firmly established among takes effect, and society immediately the people. The natural law of reaction avenges itself by stern decrees against the license of the previous age. the rule. In less than five years law and San Francisco offered no exception to Public opinion order were established. controlled individual conduct. The attractions of vice gave way to the enjoyments of social life, of home, of marriage, and domestic comfort. Trade, and commerce, and the ledger, superseded cards and the gambling saloons; rascality and vice were fairly beaten out of the field by industry and respectability; and the very men who a few years before exhausted Francisco. They appear to be an ingenious rather than a practical race. "Their mechanical contrivances were not in the usual rough, straightforward style of the mines; they were curious, and very elaborately got up, but extremely wasteful of labor, and, moreover, very ineffective. "The pumps which they had at work here were an instance of this. They were on the principle of a chain-pump, the chain being hinging on each other, with cross-pieces in the formed of pieces of wood about six inches long, middle for buckets, having about six square inches of surface. The hinges fitted exactly to the spokes of a small wheel, which was turned by a Chinaman at each side of it working a miniature treadmill of four spokes on the same axle. As specimens of joiner-work they were very pretty, but as pumps they were ridiculous; they threw a mere driblet of water: the chain was not even incased in a box; it merely lay in a slanting trough, so that more than one half the capacity of the buckets was lost. An American miner, at the expenditure of one tenth part of the labor of making such toys, would have set a water-wheel in the river to work an ele themselves in the lowest debauchery, resolved into hard-working honest citizens, who read their newspapers, carried on a gigantic trade, built churches and schools, and took their wives to an evening concert. Mr. Borthwick fails to tell us by what means this stable government was produced by 1856 out of the chaos of confusion of 1851. It is no easy task to form a constitution, or to establish a government. However, if San Francisco in 1851 was a miracle of vice, in 1856 it was a miracle of energy, enterprise, industry, and improvement. A more healthy tone pervaded the morale of society. It was no longer restricted to men; women, as wives and daughters, softened and subdued the tone of the place. Trade and manufactures flourished. The extent and accommodation of the city had enormously increased. The inventive mechanical genius of our people devised a steam spade, or paddy, which swept away the surround-vating pump, which would have thrown more ing sand-hills, where well-built houses now form populous suburbs, while long ranges of magnificent and lofty warehouses stretch out for a mile upon land recovered from the sea, so that the Upper Town looks proudly down upon handsome streets, churches, banks, and buildings, which do honor to the public spirit and liberality of the citizens of San Francisco. One of the most curious features of San Francisco is the Chinese quarter of the city. The Celestials have invaded California to the extent of some forty thousand; at one time they arrived in such shiploads that the Americans seriously considered the propriety of expelling the whole race from the country. They form a distinct class, live by themselves, and both in the towns and at the mines maintain their exclusiveness. They trade or dig, as the case may be, and, when they have realized sufficient wealth, they leave the country, taking their gold with them. Their whole system is most singular. A ship-load will arrive consigned to some wealthy Chinaman in San Francisco. He immediately prepares quarters for the immigrants in the town, lands them like a cargo of slaves, and in a day or two marches them off in charge of an agent to the mines, to work at fixed wages. While at the diggings they are kept under complete control by the agent, and are regularly victualed, clothed, and paid like soldiers on service, by the chief at San water in half an hour than four-and-twenty Chinamen could throw in a day with a dozen of these gimcrack contrivances. "They are an industrious set of people, no doubt, but are certainly not calculated for golddigging. They do not work with the same force or vigor as American or European miners, but handle their tools like so many women, as if they were afraid of hurting themselves. The Americans call it 'scratching,' which was a very expressive term for their style of digging. They did not venture to assert equal rights so far as to take up any claim which other miners would think it worth while to work; but in such places as yielded them a dollar or two a day they were allowed to scratch away unmolested. Had they happened to strike a rich lead, they would have been driven off their claim immediately. They were very averse to working in the water, and for four or five hours in the heat of the day they assembled under the shade of a tree, where they sat fanning themselves, drinking tea, and saying 'too muchee hot.'" A Chinaman is about the most harmless, inoffensive creature on the face of the earth; he is not pugilistic by nature. Here is a laughable description of a squabble in their camp: "On the whole, they seemed a harmless, inoffensive people; but one day, as we were going to dinner, we heard an unusual hullaballoo going on where the Chinamen were at work; and on reaching the place we found the whole tribe of Celestials divided into two equal parties, drawn up against each other in battle array, brandishing picks and shovels, lifting stones as if to hurl them at their adversaries' heads, and every man chattering and gesticulating in the most frantic manner. The miners collected on the ground to see the muss,' and cheered the Chinamen on to more active hostilities. But after taunting and threatening each other in this way for about an hour, during which time, although the excitement seemed to be continually increasing, not a blow was struck nor a stone thrown, the two parties suddenly, and without any apparent cause, fraternized, and moved off together to their tents. What all the row was about, or why peace was so suddenly proclaimed, was of course a mystery to us outside barbarians; and the tame and unsatisfactory termination of such warlike demonstrations was a great disappointment, as we had been every moment expecting that the ball would open, and hoped to see a general engagement. "It reminded me of the way in which a couple of French Canadians have a set-to. Shaking their fists within an inch of each other's faces, they call each other all the names imaginable, beginning with sacré cochon, and going through a long series of still less complimentary epithets, till finally sacré astrologe caps the climax. This is a regular smasher; it is supposed to be such a comprehensive term as to exhaust the whole vocabulary; both parties then give in for want of ammunition, and the fight is over. I presume it was by a similar process that the Chinamen arrived at a solution of their difficulty; at all events, discretion seemed to form a very large component part of Celestial valor." tried to keep pace with the progress of the day. 'They had their theater and their gamblingrooms, the latter being small dirty places, badly lighted with Chinese paper lamps. They played a peculiar game. The dealer placed on the table several handfuls of small copper coins, with square holes in them. Bets were made by placing the stake on one of four divisions, marked in the middle of the table, and the dealer, drawing the coins away from the heap, four at a time, the bets were decided according to whether one, two, three, or four remained at the last. They are great gamblers, and, when their last dollar is gone, will stake anything they possess: numbers of watches, rings, and such articles, were always lying in pawn on the table. "The Chinese theater was a curious pagoda looking edifice, built by them expressly for theatrical purposes, and painted, outside and in, in an extraordinary manner. The performances went on day and night, without intermission, and consisted principally of juggling and feats of dexterity. The most exciting part of the exhibition was when one man, and decidedly a man of some little nerve, made a spread eagle of himself and stood up against a door, while half a dozen others, at a distance of fifteen or twenty feet, pelted the door with sharp-pointed bowie-knives, putting a knife into In San Francisco their quarter presents every square inch of the door, but never touchsome novel features: Sus "Here the majority of the houses were of Chinese importation, and were stores, stocked with hams, tea, dried fish, dried ducks, and other very nasty-looking Chinese eatables, besides copper-pots and kettles, fans, shawls, chessmen, and all sorts of curiosities. pended over the doors were brilliantly-colored boards, about the size and shape of a headboard over a grave, covered with Chinese characters, and with several yards of red ribbon streaming from them; while the streets were thronged with long-tailed Celestials, chattering vociferously as they rushed about from store to store, or standing in groups studying the Chinese bills posted up in the shop windows, which may have been play-bills-for there was a Chinese theater-or perhaps advertisements informing the public where the best rat pies were to be had. A peculiarly nasty smell pervaded this locality, and it was generally be lieved that rats were not so numerous here as elsewhere. "Owing to the great scarcity of washerwomen, Chinese energy had ample room to display itself in the washing and ironing business. Throughout the town might be seen occasionally, over some small house, a large American sign, intimating that Ching Sing, Wong Choo, or Ki-chong did washing and ironing at five dollars a dozen. Inside these places one found two or three Chinamen ironing shirts with large flat-bottomed copper pots full of burning charcoal, and, buried in heaps of dirty clothes, half a dozen more, smoking and drinking tea." But the Celestials did not despise the vices of European civilization. They ing the man. It was very pleasant to see, from the unflinching way in which the fellow stood it out, the confidence he placed in the infallibility of his brethren. They had also short dramatic performances, which were quite unintelligible to outside barbarians. The only point of interest about them was the extraordinary gorgeous dresses of the actors; but the incessant noise they made with gongs and kettledrums was so discordant and deafening, that a few minutes at a time was as long as any one could stay in the place." Among the principal sports of the diggings in California is the bear and bullwhich fight; here is a description of one, the reader may compare with the account of a Spanish bull-fight by one of our own correspondents in the present number. Savage brutality characterizes both; and we are not sure that in this respect the palm does not belong to our own country men. The bear, a fine specimen of a grizzly, called after General Scott, was chained in the middle of the arena by a twenty foot chain. "The next thing to be done was to introduce the bull. The bars between his pen and the arena were removed, while two or three men stood ready to put them up again as soon as he should come out. But he did not seem to like the prospect, and was not disposed to move till pretty sharply poked up from behind, when, making a furious dash at the red flag which was being waved in front of the gate, he found himself in the ring face to face with General Scott. "The General, in the mean time, had scraped a hole for himself two or three inches deep, in which he was lying down. This, I was told by those who had seen his performances before, was his usual fighting attitude. "The bull was a very beautiful animal, of a dark purple color marked with white. His horns were regular and sharp, and his coat was as smooth and glossy as a racer's. He stood for a moment taking a survey of the bear, the ring, and the crowds of people; but not liking the appearance of things in general, he wheeled round, and made a splendid dash at the bars, which had already been put up between him and his pen, smashing through them with as much ease as the man in the circus leaps through a hoop of brown paper. This was only losing time, however, for he had to go in and fight, and might as well have done so at once. He was accordingly again pursuaded to enter the arena, and a perfect barricade of bars and boards was erected to prevent his making another retreat. But by this time he had made up his mind to fight; and after looking steadily at the bear for a few minutes, as if taking aim at him, he put down his head and charged furiously at him across the arena. The bear received him crouching down as low as he could, and though one could hear the bump of the bull's head and horns upon his ribs, he was quick enough to seize the bull by the nose before he could retreat. This spirited commencement of the battle on the part of the bull was hailed with uproarious applause; and, by having shown such pluck, he had gained more than ever the sympathy of the vast assemblage of people. "In the mean time, the bear, lying on his back, held the bull's nose firmly between his teeth, and embraced him round the neck with his fore-paws, while the bull made the most of his opportunities in stamping on the bear with his hind-feet. At last the General became exasperated at such treatment, and shook the bull savagely by the nose, when a promiscuous scuffle ensued, which resulted in the bear throwing his antagonist to the ground with his fore-paws. "For this feat the bear was cheered immensely, and it was thought that, having the bull down, he would make short work of him; but apparently wild beasts do not tear each other to pieces quite so easily as is generally supposed, for neither the bear's teeth nor his long claws seemed to have much effect on the hide of the bull, who soon regained his feet, and, disengaging himself, retired to the other side of the ring, while the bear again crouched down in his hole. "The bull showed no inclination to renew the combat; but by goading him, and waving a red flag over the bear, he was eventually worked up to such a state of fury as to make another charge. The result was exactly the same as before, only that when the bull managed to get up after being thrown, the bear still had hold of the skin of his back. "In the next round both parties fought more savagely than ever, and the advantage was rather in favor of the bear; the bull seemed to be quite used up, and to have lost all chance of victory. "The conductor of the performances then mounted the barrier, and, addressing the crowd, asked them if the bull had not had fair play, which was unanimously allowed. He then stated that he knew there was not a bull in California which the General could not whip, and that for two hundred dollars he would let in the other bull, and the three should fight it out till one or all were killed. "This proposal was received with loud cheers, and two or three men going round with hats soon collected, in voluntary contributions, the required amount. The people were intensely excited and delighted with the sport, and double the sum would have been just as quickly raised to insure a continuance of, the scene. sitting next me, who was a connoisseur in bearfights, and passionately fond of the amusement, informed me that this was the finest fight ever fit in the country.' A man "The second bull was equally handsome as the first, and in as good condition. On entering the arena, and looking around him, he seemed to understand the state of affairs at once. Glancing from the bear lying on the ground to the other bull standing at the opposite side of the ring, with drooping head and bloody nose, he seemed to divine at once that the bear was their common enemy, and rushed at him full tilt. The bear, as usual, pinned him by the nose; but this bull did not take such treatment so quietly as the other; struggling violently, he soon freed himself, and, wheeling round as he did so, he caught the bear on the hind-quarters and knocked him over; while the other bull, who had been quietly watching the proceedings, thought this a good opportunity to pitch in also, and rushing up, he gave the bear a dig in the ribs on the other side before he had time to recover himself. The poor General between the two did not know what to do, but struck out blindly with his fore-paws with such a pitiable look, that I thought this the most disgusting part of the whole exhibition. "After another round or two with the fresh bull, it was evident that he was no match for the bear, and it was agreed to conclude the performances. The bulls were then shot to put them out of pain, and the company dispersed, all apparently satisfied that it had been a very splendid fight." Such were the scenes witnessed in San Francisco but eight short years ago. Few cities in the Union can boast of more order-loving citizens, especially since the celebrated Vigilance Committee undertook the task of ridding it of its murderers and gamblers; and we have much pleasure in apprizing Mr. Borthwick of the fact, which, up to the present, he appears to be totally ignorant of. San Francisco has steadily advanced in morality, and the days when her citizens delighted in bear and bull-fighting are past. TH THE FATE OF LAVOISIER. smiled, and remarked that farmer-generalship was a fine trade-they wished they had the like; but if the old Lavoisier had been a little close, young Antoine Laurent, when the office devolved on him, was so generous-thinking so little of amassing wealth, and doing so much good with it— that it would have been difficult to find a THE philosopher who gave the final coup de grâce to the wild mysticism of alchemy, and laid the foundation of modern chemistry as we find it, Antoine Laurent Lavoisier, was an extraordinary character. He was also an unfortunate man. He lost his head by a stroke of the guillotine | rich government official with fewer enein the stormiest part of the first French republic, and because of a tobacco question! Yes, it was even so. For this cause, ostensibly, the wise, the generous, the benevolent Antoine Laurent Lavoisier died. He was said by his enemies to have water-giving him more time to cultivate philosoed his tobacco! It was in the year 1794, when the notorious triumvirate of public safety were committing their atrocities-when to be good, or well-born, or rich, was each a sufficient cause to be held in suspicion by the triumvirate-that Antoine Laurent Lavoisier, and his friend Berthollet, were engaged in making some of those discoveries which have rendered them both so celebrated. The house of Lavoisier was where they prosecuted their experiments. That house was in Paris. Men engaged in any deep pursuit usually take little heed of political strife. They live in a world of abstraction, all their own, and are not usually much influenced or affected by what is taking place outside their own sphere. Lavoisier was like Cavendish in one respect he was a scientific man, and he inherited riches. His family had for many generations held the post of fermiergeneral-an office, we need hardly say, abolished before the time of which we write, because the terrible revolution swept all those posts of the old régime away. Would that all the crimes to be laid to the charge of the French revolutionists were so venial as this! The office of fermiergeneral was of this kind; a responsible individual agreed, for a consideration, to pay into the exchequer a fixed sum on behalf of certain things, tobacco being one. The fermier-general then, whoever he might be, held the monopoly for the sale of tobacco for his own district. For many generations the post in question had been held by the family of Lavoisier. They grew wealthy upon it, which may be taken as a proof that they found it a good thing. But no flagrant charge of impropriety was ever brought against the Lavoisiers. People shook their heads sometimes, and mies. Then, finally, when the storm of revolution came, and the lucrative sinecure, with others of its stamp, was swept away, Lavoisier treated the matter so lightly— speaking of it as a positive gain, and as phy, that the few who had been envious of him were constrained to admit Antoine Laurent Lavoisier to be-what his friends and the world knew long before-a philosopher. At the period to which our remarks apply, Lavoisier was living at Paris, whither he had come some years before, the better to follow out, in the society of congenial minds, some experiments in which he was engaged. Being himself rich, he threw open his house and his laboratory to those who, with similar tastes to his own, had fewer means of gratifying them. One great disadvantage under which a chemist is placed, in comparison with workers in other branches of philosophy, is the expense of the instruments with which he has to work. Many a student of pure mathematics has positively no instruments. If he have to practically apply his mathematics, a few fixed, unchanging instruments are all he requires. Give the botanist a pocket lens, and, if he be luxurious, a microscope, and he is well provided; and though the instruments necessary to the astronomers are costly, they too are for the most part unchanging. But men who devote themselves to new lines of chemical investigation frequently require instruments to be devised, and, what is still more difficult, the wherewithal to pay for them. Lavoisier, at the period of our memoir, was engaged in proving what has since become a truth in the mouth of every moderately educated person, namely, that the diamond and charcoal are in composition identical. An investigation so curious made great stir at the time, and the English chemist Priestley, and the celebrated French chemist Berthollet, were appointed to come to the laboratory of |