Art Out-of-Doors 



larger estates which are being estabhshed 

 toward the rocky end of the promontory, or 

 of the more spacious of the gromids which 

 front upon the avenues. But scores of 

 Newport houses which are called cottages, 

 but in reality are large and sometimes very 

 pompous villas or even mansions, stand in 

 very small grounds, and here some degree 

 of formality certainly seems desirable. Here 

 architecture certainly dominates the general 

 picture, and if the grounds are to be appro- 

 priate and to assert their own importance 

 they may well be given an architectonic 

 character. 



Vvliat are such grounds to-day ? If some 

 measure of taste has illumined their guard- 

 ians, they are, perhaps, green little lawns 

 cut by one or two lines of gravel and encir- 

 cled by naturalistic groups of trees and 

 shrubs. Then they are pretty in them- 

 selves, but not dignified enough, not con- 

 sciously artistic enough — I may say, not ar- 

 tificial enough — to befit their service as 

 adjuncts to a large costly house and as fore- 

 grounds over which, from the house, one 

 sees the rigid lines of the street and the 

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