colony of Massachusetts, as Roger Williams and his friends had just before been compelled to seek an asylum on the site of the present city of Providence, thirty miles above, at the head of the Narragansett Bay. Clarke and his fellow-exiles had set out for Long Island on the Delaware, but were happily stopped en route by Mr. Williams and persuaded to enshrine their Penates on the Island of Aquidneck, in his own vicinage. Their first settlement was at Po

casset, now Portsmouth, in the upper part of their new territory, but the busy hive increased so fast, that when a year only had passed they found it necessary to swarm, which they did, a portion of them proceeding south-ward, in 1639, and founding for themselves the present city of Newport.

As on the settlement of Roger Williams in Providence, so in the colony at Aquidneck, there was a hearty exorcising of the demon of intolerance and persecution, in matters of conscience, which so marred the character of the neighboring regions; and entire freedom, both religious and civil, was solemnly assured to all-a wise as well as just policy which at once strengthened the new settlements with the wealth and virtue of the classes proscribed elsewhere, especially the then numerous ones of Quakers and Jews. The admission of these elements into the body politic and social, contributed greatly to the

CHATEAU SUR MER. SEAT OF WILLIAM S. WETMORE, ESQ.

immediate success and to the after fortunes of the people; and to this day is the salutary influence powerfully and usefully at work.

Next to the great blessing of religious liberty, the chief attraction of Aquidneck, or Rhode Island- as the inhabitants re-named it, from

its fancied resemblance to the Isle of Rhodes in the Mediterranean was the purity and pleasantness of its climate, a greater secret of its success at this day even than then.

'It is,' says Neal in his history (1715-20) deservedly esteemed the paradise of New-England, for the fruitfulness of the soil and for the temperateness of the climate; and though it be not above sixty-five miles south of Boston, it is a coat warmer in winter.' Berkeley, of whose agreeable connection with the neighborhood we shall speak by-and-by, writing in 1729 to a friend, describes the climate as like that of Italy, and not colder in winter than he had experienced it every where north of Rome. We have,' said Callender in his Historical Discourse in 1739, all summer, a south and a south-westerly sea-breeze;' while another writer of a century back praised it as 'the healthiest country he ever knew.'

The climate of Newport, thus so remarked by visitors at the earliest periods, no less than now, for its charming qualities, comes, says Professor Maury, from the trend of the gulf-stream, driven thitherward by the prevailing south and south-west winds.

In March, 1644, six years after the first settlement at Aquidneck

and seven years after the arrival of Williams at Providence, the two colonies were united by the English crown under a free, common charter, with their present style and title of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, and with the fitting words 'Amor vincet omnia,' as their confederate motto.

For the space of a cen tury and more from the time of its first settlement in 1639 to the approach of the Revolution, when its commercial character passed away, Newport continued steadily to grow in numbers and importance,

until it came to be looked upon as the future metropolis of America, 'being then ranked,' says Cooper in the Red Rover, among the most important posts along the whole line of our extended coasts.' It was at this palmy period questionable if even New-York could ever, with all its great promise, attain to the hight which Newport had reached! All the neighboring towns drew their foreign supplies from the little capital of Rhode Island, and looked to it as a market for their own industry. More and more, year by year, her growing manufactories amassed wealth at home, and her increasing tonnage gathered fortune abroad. At one time upward of thirty distilleries were in active operation, and a large fleet was continually engaged in the transport of their materials from the West Indies. Her seamen were enterprising and successful too, in the whale-fishing, and were the first, it is said, to carry that bold business as far as the Falkland Islands.

The old commercial character of the town came to our mind in vivid contrast with the present aspect when, as we were only the other day gliding down its quiet harbor in one of the many pleasure boats of the place, our eye fell upon one a solitary one of those veterans of the sea a whale-ship; and our skipper informed us that she had sunk herself to her owners,' having just come home, after a four year's cruise, with only four hundred barrels of oil. Drifting beneath the stern of the grim old craft, we thought we saw 'Ichabod, Newport,' painted there!

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In these days of commercial prosperity, Newport was not less eminent for intelligence, taste, and learning, and was, as Dr. Waterhouse said in 1824, (Boston Intelligencer,) the chosen resort of the rich and philosophic from nearly all parts of the civilized world.' In this characteristic of the old town there was a foreshadowing of the special features of the new; for, with all its opulence and refinements, the social Newport of the nineteenth century by no means exceeds that of the eighteenth, in elegance and culture, or even approaches it in truc dignity and courtliness of manners, in princely liberality, or in hightoned morale. These were yet the stately days of the old aristocratic régime, when the unwashed democracy of modern times was all undreamed of.

Among the earliest of the distinguished names associated with the story of Newport is that of the venerable Bishop Berkeley, who made his appearance there in 1729, tarrying some two years. The memory of this amiable and learned philosopher is often and vividly recalled to the mind of the present people and visitors at Newport. On the edge of the town, within sound of the surf on the sea-shore, there yet stands the house which he built and occupied, under the name of Whitehall, beneath the humble roof of which he wrote some of his finest works, among them the famous ode in which occurs the oftquoted line, Westward the course of empire takes its way.' In a recess of the rocky bluff near by, on the Sachuest or Second Beach,

known to us as the Hanging Rocks, he is said to have penned the pages of his Minute Philosopher,' under the inspiration of the voiceful sea. The worthy Bishop's eloquence was occasionally heard from the pulpit of the venerable Trinity Church, and the organ in use there to this day, was the gift of his generous hand.

In the society which Berkeley met in Newport was found his clerical friend Honeyman, the rector of Trinity Church, and the god-father of the lofty observatory-crowned eminence on the north of the city. Then there was the Rev. John Callender, the author of the famous "Historical Discourse; the wise divines Stiles and Hopkinson, and Abraham Redwood, the generous founder of the beautiful Redwood Library, so attractive to the stranger in the town at the present day: and besides these learned worthies, there were the hospitable Malbones, Godfrey and John, many merchant princes, and other large-hearted specimens of the fine old gentry of by-gone days. It would be pleasant to recall here the numerous anecdotes which have come down to us of the social life of Newport at this period, but we must hasten on to the eventful story of later days. Before we glance at this, the revolutionary epoch, no less in the fortunes and fate of Newport than in the political character of the country, let us hastily chronicle the names of yet a few others whose lives have shed lustre upon the place, as that of Gilbert Stuart, the illustrious painter, and of Edward Malbone, another estimable artist, and of yet a third, the venerable Charles B. King, yet living, as long may he continue to, among us. eloquent voice of Channing was often heard on the old isle of Aquidneck, and his homestead is among the picturesque relics of the region. So, also, are the home and tomb of Oliver Hazard Perry, the illustrious Commodore of the Lake.

It was thus, under the most propitious breezes of fortune, material and moral, ruffled only in earlier years by the neighboring wars of King Philip, and the still earlier rumors of wars be tween the French and Indians in the north, that old Newport lived from her birth to the troublous days of the Revolution, which robbed her of her population and wealth, never to come back again by the old path of commercial enterprise and success.