San Francisco, which has already been several times burned down, and as often, Phœnix-like, arisen from its ashes, seems to be improved by each conflagration. A new edition, revised and improved, has just been issued. I should not have known the city. Indeed, there was little there--excepting the land, and that cut down and changed--which had been there when I left. The city of tents and sheds was changed to one of substantial edifices, while some blocks of very respectable brick houses had been built. One could not pass through the city without being impressed with the sentiment which seems to describe the whole thing, “_Enterprise run mad._”[B] Each one of the vast throng hastens on, busy in his own plans and pursuits. Nothing can so well give the idea, by a single image, of San Francisco, as naming it a moral whirlpool. A mysterious, but all-pervading and powerful attraction, emanating from this wonderful point, has been felt in the remotest parts of the earth. Civilized, semi-barbarous, and savage--American, European, Asiatic, and African--feel it. The missionary and the gambler, the praying and the profane man, have all felt it. Drawn from the pulpit, the farm, the forum, the bench, they all rush--giddy, mazed--into this one vortex. Happy the few who escape unharmed! To give such a sketch of society in San Francisco as could be understood and appreciated-- “To force it sit, till he has pencil’d off A faithful image of the form he views”-- would indeed be a difficult task. Every thing is in such a state of transition and change, from month to month, that a truthful description now would not be such one short year hence. When I first visited the city, the gamblers generally set their tables under large tents, which answered the purpose, also, of eating-rooms. In my second visit, these tents had given place to magnificent saloons. In these vast and splendid establishments, the mind was bewildered, the senses were fascinated. Appeals--almost irresistible to the young, often to the aged, and even to those who had ministered at the altar--were made, calculated to arouse the deepest and strongest passions of our nature. There was wine, and the more intoxicating eye of beauty, to kindle and to madden. There was music, by the most accomplished and able professors of the art, to captivate. There were paintings, such as my pen may not describe; and there were treasures of silver and gold, which _might_ be theirs on the turn of a card. In my third visit to the city, these saloons had been burned down, and replaced with others more splendid and attractive. The wine, the music, the tables of gold, coined and uncoined, are all there; but no longer do such excited and eager crowds throng around the tables. There are still some who are risking and losing their all; but, comparatively, they are few.