The littérateurs of a new State are liable to be snubbed or patronized by the littérateurs of the older States. To give interest to the fiction of California, for instance, it was necessary for a Bret Harte to represent its pioneers as a class at once peculiar and outré; as if all the men who were pioneers were not from the older States, instead of being indigenous to California; so that now the early Californians have passed into the literature of half a dozen different nations, as a people half-ruffians and half-montebanks; when every one knows that no new State under the sun ever possessed so intellectual, energetic, or educated a population; and that, with the exception of a brief period when a criminal class, following in the wake of the intelligent and industrious, made it necessary for the latter to organize for self-defense, nowhere on the continent was there a better-ordered city than San Francisco.
The glamour of the gold excitement passed away with the first fifteen years of marvelous growth, and California was simply a new State, with, for a new State, a large class of wealthy men with the habits of men of business everywhere. Then it became the reproach of Californians that they were money makers and money lovers only; that they expended their millions, more or less, upon fine houses and furniture, fine equipages and good dinners, upon visits to Paris, and fashionable ways in general, without contributing to the intellectual advancement of the Commonwealth. They were called upon to endow colleges, aid in the cultivation of the fine arts, and found public institutions.
While it may be true, since the rapid accumulation of money often bewilders the possessor as to its best use, that many of the rich men of California have been selfishly addicted to their own pleasures and to pleasing their personal favorites, still a comparison of the public institutions of California founded or assisted by private means with those of other States of the same age would probably show a creditable munificence on their part. Our colleges, literary and special, our Academy of Science, our State Library, our hospitals, libraries, and Golden Gate Park Conservatory, with many other helps to the public intelligence and happiness, refute at least the charge of parsimony.
Nor is California lacking in literary talent, as the fame of some of our authors who have gone abroad and the conscientious work of many who remain at home suffciently prove. Our scientific men are as alert and enthusiastic as those of the older States; and in the matter of art, it may reasonably be doubted whether any States except Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, and Ohio have bestowed so liberal a patronage on painters, or sent so many young men to the art schools of Europe.
In the ordinary course of things, it is not expected that men engaged in the active pursuits of business should devote themselves either to art or literature. It is generally thought enough that one generation of men should make a fortune, another should devote themselves to self-culture, and the third should be prepared to contribute something to the world's stock of knowledge. To this rule there have been as many exceptions in California as elsewhere. One of the most notable of these instances of surmounting the obstacles which it usually occupies two generations to remove has been furnished by the founder of the Bancroft Library.
Hubert Howe Bancroft was born at Granville, Ohio, May 5th, 1832, his ancestors being of the stanch and stern New England stock who believed in and feared God, and knew the value of money and brains in the world. In his boyhood he assisted in the labors of the usual western farm, and studied assiduously in his hours of relaxation from labor. Fortunately he possessed an unusually fine constitution, which would bear almost any amount of strain put upon it. At sixteen he went to Buffalo, New York, and entered the employ of his brother-inlaw, George H. Derby, bookseller, who sent him, in 1852, to California to establish
