Page:Portraits of Places (London, Macmillan and Co., 1883).djvu/354

 and unsophisticated. You feel this most gratefully as you receive a confident bow from a pretty girl in her basket-phaeton. She is very young and very pretty, but she has a certain habitual assurance which is only a grace the more. She combines, you reflect with respectful tenderness, all that is possible in the way of modesty with all that is delightful in the way of facility. Shyness is certainly very pretty—when it is not very ugly; but shyness may often darken the bloom of genuine modesty, and a certain frankness and confidence may often incline it toward the light. Let us assume, then, that all the young ladies whom you may meet here are of the highest modern type. In the course of time they ripen into the delightful matrons who divide your admiration. It is easy to see that Newport must be a most agreeable sojourn for the male sex. The gentlemen, indeed, look wonderfully prosperous and well -conditioned. They gallop on shining horses or recline in a sort of coaxing Herculean submission beside the lovely mistress of a curricle. Young men—and young old men—I have occasion to observe, are far more numerous than at Saratoga, and of vastly superior quality. There is, indeed, in all things a striking difference in tone and aspect between these two great centres of pleasure. After Saratoga, Newport seems really substantial and civilised. Æsthetically speaking, you may remain at Newport with a fairly good conscience; at Saratoga you linger under passionate protest. At Newport life is public, if you will; at Saratoga it is absolutely common. The difference, in a word, is the difference between a group of undiscriminating