Page:Portraits of Places (London, Macmillan and Co., 1883).djvu/360

 barnacled with lichens, remind you of old barges, overturned on the beach to dry.

One of the more recent monuments of fashion is the long drive which follows the shore. The Avenue, where the Neck abruptly terminates, has been made to extend itself to the west, and to wander for a couple of miles over a lovely region of beach and lowly down and sandy meadow and salt brown sheep-grass. This region was formerly the most beautiful part of Newport—the least frequented and the most untamed by fashion. I by no means regret the creation of the new road, however. A walker may very soon isolate himself, and the occupants of carriages are exposed to a benefit quite superior to their power of injury. The peculiar charm of this great westward expanse is very difficult to define. It is in an especial degree the charm of Newport in general—the combined lowness of tone, as painters call it, in all the elements of terra firma, and the extraordinary elevation of tone in the air. For miles and miles you see at your feet, in mingled shades of yellow and gray, a desolate waste of moss-clad rock and sand-starved grass. At your left is nothing but the shine and surge of the ocean, and over your head that wonderful sky of Newport, which has such an unexpected resemblance to the sky of Venice. In spite of the bare simplicity of this prospect, its beauty is far more a beauty of detail than that of the average American landscape. Descend into a hollow of the rocks, into one of the little warm climates, five feet square, which you may find there, beside the grateful ocean glare, and you will be struck quite as much by their fineness as by their