X.

ewport.

SEPTEMBER.

HE Golden Rods begin to flame along the road-sides, and in the pleasant gardens of Newport. The gorgeous dahlias and crisp asters marshal the autumnal splendor of

the year. All day long, Herrick's Valedictory to the Suminer has

been singing itself in my mind:

Fair daffodils, we weep to see
You haste away so soon,
As yet the early-rising Sun
Has not attained his noon.
Stay, stay,

Until the hastening day

Has run;

But to the even song,

And having prayed together, we

Will go with you along!

We have short time to stay as you,
We have as short a Spring,
As quick a growth to meet decay,
As you or any thing.

We die

As your hours do; and dry
Away

Like to the Summer's rain,

Or as the pearls of morning-dew,
Ne'er to be found again.

The first chill breath of September has blown away the froth of fashion, and the cottagers anticipate with delight the cool serenity of the shortening days. The glory has utterly gone from that huge, yellow pagoda-factory, the Ocean House. The drop has fallen, the audience is departed, the lights are extinguished, and it were only to be wished that the house might vanish with the season, and not haunt "the year's last hours" with that melancholy aspect of a shrineless, deserted temple.

I fear, however, that not only the glory of a season, but of success, has left the "Ocean." The flame of fashion which burned there a year or two since, burned too intensely to last. The fickle goddess, whose temple it is, is already weary of democratic, congregational worship and affects the privacy of separate oratories. They rise on every hand. For fashion dwells in cottages now, and the hotel season is brief and not brilliant. The cottagers will come,

indeed, and hear the Germania play, and hop in the parlor; but they come as from private palaces to a public hall, and disappear again into the magnificent mystery of "cottage life."

When I first knew Newport it was a southern resort for the summer. The old Bellevue, and the present Touro House, then Whitfield's, sufficed for the strangers. It was before the Polka-before the days of music after dinner-and when the word "hop" was unknown even at Saratoga. Every body bathed in those days, and all bathed together. There was a little bowling, some driving and riding, but no fast horses or fast men-above all, no fast women. The area on the hill, of which the Ocean House is the centre, was an unsettled region. There were not a dozen cottages, and the quaint little town dozed quietly along its bay, dreaming only of the southern silence, which the character of the climate and of the visitors, who were mainly southerners, naturally suggested.

Newport was the synonyme of repose. An ingenious commentator would surely have traced the Van Winkles to a Newport origin, although as surely, the "Rip" was a soubriquet of prophetic

omen.

In those good old days New York loved Saratoga, and Newport was a name of no significance: but