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William Henry Hudson - The Famous Missions of California
marvellous natural beauties are but rarely touched with the associations of history or charms of romance,
these things have a subtle and peculiar power - a magic not to be resisted by any one who turns aside for
an hour or two from the highways of the modern world, to dream among the scenes where the old padres
toiled and died. And as in imagination he there calls up the ghostly figures of neophyte and soldier and
priest, now busy with the day's task-work, now kneeling at twilight mass in the dimly-lighted chapel; as
the murmur of strange voices and the faint music of bell and chant steal in upon his ears; he will hardly
fail to realize that, however much or little the Franciscan missionaries accomplished for California, they
have passed down to our prosaic after-generation a legacy of poetry, whereof the sweetness will not soon
die away.
The End.
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