Page:Portraits of Places (London, Macmillan and Co., 1883).djvu/356

 fertile in combinations than Saratoga. There you feel that idleness is occasional, empirical. Most of the people you see are asking themselves, you imagine, whether the game is worth the candle and work is not better than such difficult play. But here, obviously, the habit of pleasure is formed, and (within the limits of a severe morality) many of the secrets of pleasure are known. Do what we will, on certain lines Europe is in advance of us yet. Newport lags altogether behind Trouville and Brighton in her exhibition of the unmentionable. All this is markedly absent from the picture, which is therefore signally destitute of the enhancing tints produced by the mysteries and fascinations of vice. But idleness per se is vicious, and of course you may imagine what you please. For my own part, I prefer to imagine nothing but the graceful and the pure; and with the help of such imaginings you may construct a very pretty sentimental undercurrent to the superficial movement of society. This I lately found very difficult to do at Saratoga. Sentiment there is pitifully shy and elusive. Here, the multiplied relations of men and women, under the permanent pressure of luxury and idleness, give it a very fair chance. Sentiment, indeed, of masterly force and interest, springs up in every soil, with a sovereign disregard of occasion. People love and hate and aspire with the greatest intensity when they have to make their time and opportunity. I should hardly come to Newport for the materials of a tragedy. Even in their own kind, the social elements are as yet too light and thin. But I can fancy finding here the motive of a drama which