place in Bar Harbor if it were of the artificial, ostentatious kind often seen in the grounds of the wealthy. But here it is sometimes a little gem of landscapearchitecture at once formal and natural, breaking perhaps into wildness and running down to the rugged shore, or set for a surprise beside a sweep of rocky meadow, or held in the heart of a tangled thicket, like a polished nut inside its bur. While the purpose of this formalism is evidently to intensify by contrast the wild naturalness of the place, it has also resulted in lending the formal gardens here an unusual vividness and charm.

Certain vignettes persist in the memory, such as a Japanese bronze dragon, seen from above, writhing amid floral color harmonies that modulate subtly toward a pergola smothered in scarlet woodbine. Another is of a brook dammed into a charming wood-girdled pond into which runs a smaller stream, musically inclined, overarched by high-stepping miniature bridges, guarded by tiny fences of tied bamboo, and with the stone shrines and the gnarled dwarf trees of Japan standing here and there. Up by a straw-thatched pagoda that is artistically held together with ropes, a brazen Buddha presides on a ledge of rocks, and a single fern issues from a cranny beneath, in the accepted Japanese manner. Between the treetrunks one spies over the streamlet a jut of red crag, a sheet of blue-gray ocean, and a distant peak that one feels must be Fuji Yama.

The existence of the largest and most formal of Bar Harbor's gardens might be unsuspected from the steps of its villa. You adventure through a narrow, winding way in a wild copse, and glimpse first a spread of velvety turf; then suddenly, beyond a round plot of snapdragon and a sun-dial, you discover a small marble fountain surrounded by phlox and heliotrope, while the whole is backed by a semicircular bed of white snapdragon and a big, crescent loggia covered with vines.

But this is merely looking across the transept of this chapel of flowers. You move up the nave and turn for the full effect. Over the high side walls, studded with dwarf evergreens, the tree-columns of the inclosing wood look down on a dense fringe of high-growing flowers, colored as richly and delicately as aisle-win

dows of old stained glass. The central space is dedicated to a few formal trees and shrine-like vases of bloom, and beyond them two marble lions preside over the approach to the lofty choir, a stately loggia no more envined than to allow from below a glorious view of Newport Mountain.

There is space merely for these few memories of the island's gardens. It is good to know that the passion for flowers has observed no class distinctions, and that many of the fishermen's houses may now be seen blossoming like the hovels of a French village.

The beauty of the outlook from those fortunate verandas that look seaward from high places is unique. From the northwestern part of Bar Harbor, where the houses are as exquisitely conformed to the configuration of their steep grounds as Rhenish castles, one may look out over a slope of great, rough evergreens to the harbor filled with vivacious pleasurecraft, Bar Island and the Little Porcupine coming dreamily out of the haze, and, beyond, the mainland faintly penciled.

Or passing down the Ocean Drive, which can be compared only to that enchanted way winding above the Mediterranean from Amalfi to Sorrento, one discovers from the height of Seal Harbor as charming a group of pleasure-boats and a more interesting panorama of islands than are to be seen from Bar Harbor, with only the distant coast-line lacking to make this the crowning view of all.

There is not space enough to touch on the charm of Northeast Harbor and Southwest Harbor nestling by the mouth of Somes Sound, our only authentic Norwegian fjord. An eloquent tradition declares that the stranger, no matter where he first may land on Mount Desert, forever after prefers that particular spot, and returns to it every season and hotly champions its claims against all rivals. Woe betide the rash writer who should presume to decide which of the harbors is the most beautiful. As for me, I had as lief decide between Chartres Cathedral, the Winged Victory, Leonardo's Last Supper, and the Seventh Symphony.

Not alone beauty and a spirit of beauty, but a unique spirit of altruism as well has helped to unify the people of Mount Desert, much as the recession of the waters once unified a group of storm-swept moun

At Northeast Harbor and Seal Harbor the summer residents, in proportion to their numbers, are quite as active in the public interest as their Bar Harbor friends. And all work together efficiently. For example, Captain Macdonald, minister and navigator, may stand on the summit of Green and see half of his hundred-milelong parish of isle-studded coast. Some of his islands are uncharted, without laws, and beyond the pale of any government; yet not beyond the reach of the larger island's good-will. For the Maine Sea Coast Mission, supported by Mount Desert, has for five years been giving them the sort of assistance, mental, physical, and spiritual, that Dr. Grenfell brings to the fishermen of Labrador.

Not long ago a winter resident of Bar Harbor, a house-painter working at one of the cottages, was found studying a photograph, and presently he asked the mistress of the house whether it was a Perugino or a Raphael. The lady grew interested, and found, after some conversation, that the house-painter and his wife had been making a serious study of Italian art for five years. Further inquiry revealed that association with the summer people and with the artists who had built the cottages had not only trained up a body of exceptionally skilled artisans, but had also roused among the winter residents a vigorous appetite for artistic knowledge. In a community so altruistic an arts and crafts movement naturally followed, and now, under the direction of a well-known sculptor, a sort of local William Morris, the residents are learning how to cast beautiful garden decorations in cement, to model, to hammer iron, to dye fabrics, to make Italian point-lace, and so on.

When one realizes that Mount Desert is still in its infancy as a summer resort, and realizes its brilliant possibilities and the determined public spirit of the men who have set out to fulfil them, one cannot avoid the conclusion that this region is destined to be one of the important recreation centers of America.

For the island is already as unique in its variety as it is in beauty and altruism. It is a world in little. Each settlement has managed to keep its own strong individuality intact.

It is only at the height of the summer

that the prevailing note of Bar Harbor is given by the so-called "smart set." To those whose ideas of this resort have been gathered from hearsay and the newspapers, its subdued refinement of tone, its lack of "yellow streaks," will come as a surprise. "There's little heavy drinking or gambling here," Dr. Weir Mitchell remarked, "and less of the Newport ostentation. It is more like the dear old Newport I used to know in the days of Agassiz." Both before and after the butterfly season, Mount Desert is a quiet, delightful place, with an atmosphere favorable to the arts and even to philosophy. It is the home of a colony of distinguished writers and other artists. In fact, the whole island fairly teems with temperament and intellect.

It is interesting to notice the different evolutionary stages in the relation between cottagers and transients as shown by the four summer colonies. Southwest Harbor, the eldest, has kept most conservatively to the old democratic régime. There are comparatively few cottagers, the hotels are simple, and the life still keeps much of the spontaneous friendliness and camaraderie of the early days.

The hotels at Northeast are more elaborate and exclusive, and a perfect equilibrium seems to exist just now between the hotel and the cottage life. But though the relations between the two are most cordial, the friendless transient is not made welcome at these reserved hostelries. President Eliot jokingly remarked to me, "Bar Harbor considers Northeast respectable, but impecunious." Then he added, "We have no persons of very great wealth here, although they are beginning to settle at Seal Harbor."

The term "very great wealth" is both relative and somewhat vague, but there can be no difficulty in recognizing the highly individual and aristocratic quality of Northeast. Founded by Bishop Doane and President Eliot, it has held consistently to its original tone, and has known in one season no fewer than five bishops and nine college presidents.

Seal Harbor's hotel life goes far toward combining the democracy of Southwest with the elegant comfort of Northeast. But this is a more homelike harbor than its neighbors, and the colony of residents is beginning to be sufficient unto itself. The cottagers and the hotel guests form