There have been lavished upon these palaces of Newport, in construction and decoration, large portions of the greatest incomes of the multi-millionaires of New York and Boston, and hither they hie to enjoy the summer and early autumn in a sort of fashionable semi-seclusion, mingling only in their own sets, and rather resenting the excursions occasionally made by the plebeian folk into Newport to look at their displays. These princes of inherited wealth have made Newport peculiarly their own, and, their expenditures being on a scale commensurate with their millions, the growth and improvement of the newer part of the place have been extraordinary. Land in choice locations is quoted above $50,000 an acre, and a Newport "cottage" costs $500,000 to $1,000,000 to build, with more for the furnishing. Once, when I asked what was the qualification necessary to become a director of one of the great banks of New York, I was told that it was the ownership of ten shares of stock and a cottage at Newport. The sense of newness is sometimes impressive in gazing at these Aladdin palaces, for while the architecture reproduces quaint and ancient forms, the ancestral ivy does not yet cling to the walls, and the trees are still young. But there are older sites in Newport, back from the sea-front, where some of the estates, existing many years, have smaller and more subdued houses with signs of maturity, where the ivy broadly spreads and the trees have grown. Some of the foliage-embowered lanes, leading through the older suburbs, are charming in leafy richness and make scenes of exquisite rural beauty.