This place is something like _Ryde_, with numbers of villas, which in summer weather have beautiful lawns and gardens, and are filled with all the smart people from New York and Boston, &c.; in the season, they say it is wonderfully pretty and gay, and the few people remaining are so sorry I did not see Newport in all its glory, but I can guess what it would be, and I should dislike the kind of life they lead and the intense frivolity and absence of any kind of occupation, excepting dressing and flirtation! I think the _cream_ had been left behind. This morning Professor Shields took us a drive to the two _Beaches_, two little bays with bathing sands, and then we drove to Miss Mason, who lives in a very pretty villa with her sister, and is very rich, and we all walked together to the _Cliff_, where there is a fashionable promenade, with rocks and sea on one side and green turf and the villas with their gardens all open on the other. If any one has a pretty house or place here it is all exposed to the public gaze, and even _use_, a great deal! We then drove to Mrs. Bruen's, where Hedley and I lunched. I am surprised to find how _fresh_ the memory of my brother Hedley still remains in the minds of people, who I thought would have been too young to have heard of him at the time of his death, or too old to remember now what they had heard and read. Miss Mason and her friend spoke about him with such real feeling, and said they had been _brought up_ on his "memoirs." Mrs. Bruen and her family, and Professor Shields and many others speak to me as if I was quite a _friend_, because of my relationship to Hedley! Isn't this curious after thirty years? They all asked about _Lucy_, and were so romantic as to be rather distressed that she had ever married; but I told them what a good man her husband was, and that she was so active and useful, and that it would have been a great pity if she had been _lost_ as a wife and mother, &c. Mrs. Bruen, among other things, spoke of spiritualism, and said she knew from personal experience there was much truth in it. A relation and intimate friend was a powerful medium, and many extraordinary things, such as moving of furniture, (heavy chairs and tables, &c.) and raps, &c., took place under circumstances which made imposition impossible, there being frequently no one present but Mrs. Bruen and her two daughters and this lady medium. A table at the _end_ of the room would suddenly tilt up and rap. A large dining room table would tilt up, while all the things arranged for dinner on it would remain immovable--the lady not touching it. They all seemed to think that spiritualism had a bad influence, and Mrs. Bruen thinks _bad_ spirits are at work. She is a wonderful old lady, past ninety, but full of energy and interest, moving large trees and making alterations constantly in her house and garden. She kissed me at parting, and I said "I shall tell my mother what a charming old lady