he ocean, and
the other by reason of the revengeful state of his mind? He went on to
argue that the owner of a splendid villa might have, for reasons he gave,
less content in it than another person in a tiny cottage so small that it
had no spare room for his mother-in-law even, and that in fact his
satisfaction in his own place might be spoiled by the more showy place of
his neighbor. Mr. Snodgrass attempts in his book a philosophical
explanation of this. He says that if every man designed his own cottage,
or had it designed as an expression of his own ideas, and developed his
grounds and landscape according to his own tastes, working it out
himself, with the help of specialists, he would be satisfied. But when
owners have no ideas about architecture or about gardening, and their
places are the creation of some experimenting architect and a foreign
gardener, and the whole effort is not to express a person's individual
taste and character, but to make a show, then discontent as to his own
will arise whenever some new and more showy villa is built. Mr. Benson,
who was poking about a good deal, strolling along the lanes and getting
into the rears of the houses, said, when this book was discussed, that
his impression was that the real object of these fine places was to
support a lot of English gardeners, grooms, and stable-boys. They are a
kind of aristocracy. They have really made Newport (that is the summer,
transient Newport, for it is largely a transient Newport). "I've been
inquiring," continued Mr. Benson, "and you'd be surprised to know the
number of people who come here, buy or build expensive villas, splurge
out for a year or two, then fail or get tired of it, and disappear."

Mr. Snodgrass devotes a chapter to the parvenues at Newport. By the
parvenu--his definition may not be scientific--he seems to mean a person
who is vulgar, but has money, and tries to get into society on the
strength of his money alone. He is more to be pitied than any other sort
of rich man. For he not only works hard and suffers humiliation in
getting his place in society, but after he is in he works just as hard,
and with bitterness in his heart, to keep out other parvenues like
himself. And this is misery.

But our visitors did not care for the philosophizing of Mr. Snodgrass
--you can spoil almost anything by turning it wrong side out. They
thought Newport the most beautiful and finished watering-place in
America. Nature was in the love