hey did not at once
manufacture independent and law-abiding citizens, is it for us, who have
not yet exhibited triumphant success in handling the same problem under
far more favorable conditions, to cover them with our contempt, or
dismiss them with our blame? Civilization is at best a slow and painful
affair, as we half-civilized people ought surely to understand by this
time--a matter not of individuals and years, but of generations and
centuries; and nothing permanent has ever yet been gained by any
attempt, how promising soever it may have seemed, to force the natural
processes of social evolution. The mission padres bore the cross from
point to point along the far-off Pacific coast; they built churches,
they founded settlements, they gave their strength to the uplifting of
the heathen. Little that was enduring came out of all this toil. Perhaps
this was partly because their methods were shortsighted, their means
inadequate to the ends proposed. But when we remember that they had set
their hands to an almost impossible task, we shall perhaps be inclined
rather to acknowledge their partial success, than to deal harshly with
them on the score of their manifest failure.

Be all this as it may, however, the missions of California passed away,
leaving practically nothing behind them but a memory. Yet this is surely
a memory to be cherished by all who feel a pious reverence for the past,
and whose hearts are responsive to the sense of tears that there is in
mortal things. And alike for those who live beneath the blue skies of
California, and for those who wander awhile as visitors among her
scenes of wonder and enchantment, the old mission buildings will ever
be objects of curious and unique interest. Survivals from a by-gone era,
embodiments not only of the purposes of their founders, but of the faith
which built the great cathedrals of Europe, they stand pathetic figures
in a world to which they do not seem to belong. In the noise and bustle
of the civilization which is taking possession of what was once their
territory, they have no share. The life about them looks towards the
future. They point mutely to the past. A tender sentiment clings
about them; in their hushed enclosures we breathe a drowsy old-world
atmosphere of peace; to linger within their walls, to muse in their
graveyards, is to step out of the noisy present into the silence of
departed years. In a land where everything is of yesterday, and whose
marvello