The streets of earthly cities
cannot vie with the celestial, though the gold of commerce may be
found in their warehouses and mansions; but if men were as earnest in
seeking after the treasures of Heaven as were the tens of thousands
who flocked to the gold-fields of California in 1849, they would
surely win the fortune which awaits them within the Golden Gate of the
City on the banks of the Crystal River. San Francisco has her noted
streets, just as the City of Mexico has her San Francisco promenade,
leading from the Alameda to the Plaza de Zocalo; or Rome her famous
Corso, the old Via Flaminia, with its shops and its teeming life; or
Athens her Hodos Hermou, with its old Byzantine church of Kapnikaraea;
or Constantinople her Grande Rue de Pera, with its hotels and theatres
and bazaars; or old Damascus, her "street that is called straight,"
Suk et-Tawileh, the street of the Long Bazaar, with its Oriental life
and colouring; or Cairo her picturesque Muski, where you may find
illustrations of scenes in the Arabian Nights, and gratify your senses
with

"Sabean odours from the spicy shore
Of Araby the Blest."

The streets of the city by the Golden Gate have an interesting
nomenclature, which well deserves one's study for what it teaches.
Some streets in the triangular section of San Francisco, already
spoken of, are numbered. These begin west of Fremont street and run
up to Thirteenth, being bounded by Market street. Then the numbered
streets take a turn to the left hand and go from Fourteenth to
Twenty-Sixth, in the southwestern section of the city, and run due
west. Numbers on the streets of any city are of course a convenience,
but such a nomenclature has nothing else to commend it, and lacks
imagination and sacrifices bits of history which may be interwoven
with municipal life and show progress from small beginnings and
perpetuate pioneers' names and benefactors' memories. Modern Athens
in naming her streets has very wisely called them after some of the
demigods, heroes, generals, statesmen, and poets of Greece; and
grateful too for the work of Lord Byron in behalf of her independence,
she has honoured him who in immortal song spurred on her sons to
arise and cast off the Turkish yoke, with a name on one of her
thorough-fares--Hodos Tou Buronos--which the traveller reads with
emotion, even as he gazes also with admiration on the beautiful
Pentelic monument reared to the memory of her benefactor, near the
Arch o