own upon it; but the old gardens and olive
trees which had surrounded it for many years were gone, and instead
the eye fell on blocks of comfortable houses and streets suggestive of
the new life which had taken place of the old. The bull-fights which
used to take place near this spot on Sunday afternoons are things
of the past happily, and the gay, moving throngs, with picturesque
costume of Spanish make and Mexican hue, have forever vanished. The
old graveyard with its high walls on the south side of the Church
remains. Tall grass bends over the prostrate tombstones, a willow tree
serves as a mourning sentinel here and there, while the odours of
flowers, emblems of undying hopes, are wafted to us on the balmy air
as we stand, with memories of the past rushing on the mind, and gaze
silently on the scene. The building looks very quaint in the midst of
the modern life which surrounds it. It is a monument of by-gone days
with its adobe walls and tiled roof. Its front has in it a suggestion
of an Egyptian temple. Its architecture is Spanish and Mexican and old
Californian combined. You can not fail to carry away its picture in
your memory, for without any effort on your part it is photographed on
your mind for the remainder of your days. These old Mission buildings
of California and of Mexico too are all very similar in their
construction. Some have the tower which reminds you of the Minaret
of a mosque. I fancy, as the idea of the Mission building with its
rectangular grounds, generally walled, came from Spain, that the
mosque, with its square enclosure and houses for its attendants, was
its model. The Moors of Spain have left their impress behind them
in architecture as well as in other things. They borrowed from
Constantinople, and the City of the Golden Horn has extended its
influence in one way and another over all the civilised world. But
Dolores is crumbling, and its services, still held, and its "Bells,"
of which Bret Harte sang so sweetly years ago, can not arrest its
decay. In it is seen "the dying glow of Spanish glory," which once,
like a cimeter, flashed forth here. Yet, though a building fall and
a nation be uprooted, "the Church of Jesus constant will remain,"
shedding its glory on generation after generation and beautifying the
human race!

Let us now pursue our walk in a northwesterly direction to the
Presidio. The descendants of the old Spanish families in San Francisco
pronounce the word still in the Cas