The district of the State in which Palo-Alto is situated boasts of several residences of the Californian millionaires. One house which we visited, I think belonging to Mr. Flood, furnished the most ornate and beautiful examples of woodwork that were ever seen by any of the party. The house, which was as large as a good-sized English country mansion, is constructed of timber of the finest quality, beautifully worked, painted and varnished; and with moderate care a mansion of this kind will last, in this climate, a couple of hundred years, which to the American mind is an eternity. There were artists from New York, and the staff of an upholsterer and decorator of great renown from the Empire City were still busily engaged in the place as we went through the rooms. The magnificent halls, reception-rooms, billiard-rooms, library, bedrooms, all fitted up with extraordinary luxuriousness, but in a somewhat florid taste, were of wood, the doors of many of the apartments arresting attention by their extraordinary beauty and finish. The ceilings decorated in fresco by Italian artists, and bright windows filled with stained glass gave an appearance of light and grace to the whole residence. The kitchen arrangements were marvels of ingenuity, and one envied the butler who would have such a pantry as that which was displayed for our inspection. Some of the pictures which were ready to be placed on the walls were remarkable, however, only for the richness of their frames; and, indeed, we heard that the excellent proprietor was not a man of very cultivated taste; a child of fortune, in the prime of life and of money-making, spending a portion of his enormous wealth with an easy hand, but destitute of what is called book-learning, and leaving to some future generation the cultivation of the graces and the acquirement of accomplishments which the circumstances of his early life had denied him to effect.