Even this consciousness at times lies dumb and inert. I wonder at such times whether, to appeal fairly to the general human sense, the prospect here has not something too much of the extra-terrestrial element. Life seems too short, space too narrow, to warrant you in giving in an unqualified adhesion to a paysage which is two-thirds ocean. For the most part, however, I am willing to take the landscape as it stands, and to think that, without its native complement of sea, the land would lose much of its beauty. It is, in fact, a land exquisitely modified by marine influences. Indeed, in spite of all the evil it has done me, I could find it in my soul to love the sea when I consider how it co-operates with the Newport promontories to the delight of the eye. Give it up altogether, and you can thus enjoy it still, reflected and immobilized—like the Prussian army a month hence.

Newport consists, as the reader will know, of an ancient and honorable town, a goodly harbor, and a long, broad neck of land, stretching southward into the sea, and forming the chief habitation of the summer colony. Along the greater part of its eastward length, this projecting coast is bordered with lordly cliffs and dotted with seaward-gazing villas. At the head of the promontory the villas enjoy a magnificent reach of prospect. The pure Atlantic—the Old World westward tides—expire directly at their feet. Behind the line of villas runs the Avenue, with more villas yet—of which there is nothing at all to say, but that those built recently are a hundred times prettier than those built fifteen years ago, offering a modest contribution to our modern architectural Renaissance. Some years ago, when I first knew Newport, the town proper was considered extremely “picturesque.” If an antique shabbiness that amounts almost to squalor is a pertinent element, as I believe it is, of the picturesque, the little main street at least—Thames Street by name—still deserves the praise. Here, in their crooked and dwarfish wooden mansions, are the shops that minister to the daily needs of the expanded city; and here of a summer morning, jolting over the cobble-stones of the narrow roadway, you may see a hundred superfine ladies seeking with languid eagerness what they may buy—to “buy something,” I believe, being a diurnal necessity of the American woman of substance. This busy region gradually melts away into the grass-grown stillness of the Point, in the eyes of many persons the pleasantest quarter in Newport. It has superficially the advantage of being as yet uninvaded by fashion. When I first knew it, however, its peculiar charm was even more undisturbed than at present. The Point may be called the old residential, as distinguished from the commercial, town. It is meagre, shallow, and scanty—a mere pinch of antiquity—but, as far as it goes, it retains an exquisite tone. It leaves the shops and the little wharves, and wanders close to the harbor, where the breeze-borne rattle of shifted sails and spars alone intrudes upon its stillness, till its mouldy-timbered quiet subsides into the low, tame rocks and beaches which edge the bay. Several fine modern houses have recently been erected on the water-side, absorbing the sober, primitive tenements which used to maintain the picturesque character of the place. They improve it, of course, as a residence, but they injure it as a spectacle. Enough of early architecture still remains, however, to suggest a multitude of thoughts as to the severe simplicity of the generation which produced it. It is picturesque in a way, but with a paucity of elements which seems to defy all effect. The plain gray nudity of these little warped and shingled boxes seems utterly to repudiate the slightest curiosity. But here, as elsewhere, the magical Newport atmosphere wins half the battle. It aims at no mystery. It clothes them in a garment of absolute light. Their homely notches and splinters twinkle in the sun. Their steep gray roofs, barnacled with lichens, remind you of old scows, overturned on the beach to dry. They show for what they are—simple houses by the sea.