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Sierra Club Bulletin. 



our homes and our hearts almost unnoticed. But their 

 clear, steady vision, their simplicity, their power of sym- 

 pathetic interpretation, their delicate and masterly art, 

 place them in quite another category than those. 



The second period was the period of conscious organi- 

 zation, — the beginnings and development of permanent 

 institutions and social life. It was a period of immense 

 importance and varied interest, still little trammeled by 

 convention, and filled with vivid memories and traditions 

 of its own more picturesque and more turbulent past ; but 

 aspiring now to a more rational self-consciousness, and 

 eagerly welcoming whatever might contribute to that 

 end. Its serious business was, very largely, taking ac- 

 count of stock. Its chief literary activity was no longer 

 creative, but scientific and statistical, displaying itself in 

 an eager search for all historical data which might throw 

 light on its new origin, and for a science which should 

 put it into rational possession of its own fair earthly heri- 

 tage. It was the period typified, let us say, by Bancroft's 

 Histories and the Geological Survey. Its product, there- 

 fore, was not primarily literature, but rather the raw 

 material of literature out of which our present ephemera 

 of novels and short stories are so largely constructed. 

 This lull in literary production during the 70's and 80's 

 was frequently remarked upon at the time, and will be 

 easily recalled by all who knew California in those days. 

 Yet there was a group of men who were not unmindful 

 of their high calling — poets all of them, though in differ- 

 ent kind: Sill, Keith, Yelland, Muir, Charles Warren 

 Stoddard ; and into this group by accident of fate for one 

 brief season came Stevenson. His coming here was in- 

 deed an accident, but not the genius which guided and 

 shaped him so surely for his place beside these men. Nor 

 is it an accident that of those five distinguished Cali- 

 fornian artists, three were Scotchmen, and that Stevenson 

 makes the fourth in the group of six. Recall what Mat- 

 thew Arnold has said about the magic power and charm 

 in dealing with nature which the Celtic strain has brought 



