The writer and his friends considered themselves fortunate to be able to thread their way through the crowd without being crushed or having their garments torn.

It was the grandest function of a social character which ever took place on the Pacific coast.

The costly paintings adorning chambers, galleries and reception rooms, the splendid specimens of statuary, the numerous pictures, the brilliant lights, the strains of joyous music, but above all the moving throng of handsome women beautifully arrayed, and the noble bearing of Bishop, Priest and layman, with the fine intellectual faces seen on all sides, made this reception a scene never to be forgotten.
Who, in the days of forty-nine, would have dreamed that, a little over a half a century later, there would be such a magnificent gathering of intellect and beauty,--men and women with lofty aims and noted for their achievements in letters and art, and their prominence in Church and State, and excelling in virtuous deeds, on a hill which was then a barren waste of shifting sands?
While I am speaking of the reception in the Hopkins' Art Institute, I may note that Californians have a great love for art.

Their own grand scenery of mountain and valley and ocean fosters the love for the beautiful; and to-day they can point with pride to the works of such men as Julian Rix, Charles Dickman, H.J.Bloomer, J.M.Gamble, and H.Breuer, whose landscapes are eagerly sought for, and command high prices.

The frequent sales of paintings are the best evidence that the people of San Francisco equal the citizens of the oldest cities of the land in refinement and the elevation of the mind and heart above the mere desire to make money.