THE Isle of Peace lies cradled in the wide arms of a noble bay. Fifteen miles long and from four to five miles in width, its shape is not unlike that of an heraldic dragon, laid at ease in the blue waters, with head pointed to the southwest. From this head to the jutting cape which does duty as the left claw of the beast, the shore is a succession of bold cliffs, broken by coves and stretches of rocky shingle, and in two places by magnificent curving beaches, upon which a perpetual surf foams and thunders. Parallel ridges of low hills run back from the sea. Between these lie ferny valleys, where wild roses grow in thickets, and such shy flowers as love solitude and a sheltered situation spread a carpet for the spring and early summer. On the farther The Indians, with that fine occasional instinct which is in such odd contrast to other of their characteristics, gave the place its pretty name. Aquidneck, the Isle of Peace, they called it. To modern men it is known as the island of Rhode Island, made famous the land over by the town built on its seaward extremity—the town of Newport. It is an old town, and its history dates back to the early days of the New England colony. City, it calls itself, but one loves better to think of it as a town, just as the word “avenue,” now so popular, is in some minds forever translated into the simpler equivalent, “street.” As the veiling mists gather and shift, and then, caught by the outgoing breeze, float seaward again, we catch glimpses, framed, as it were, between the centuries, quaint, oddly differing from each other, but full of interest. The earliest of these glimpses dates back to an April morning in 1524. There is the cliff-line, the surf, the grassy capes tinged with sun, and in the sheltered bay a strange little vessel is dropping her anchor. It is the caravel of Vezzerano, pioneer of French explorers in these northern waters, and first of that great tide of “summer visitors” which has since followed in his wake. How he was received, and by whom, Mr. Parkman tells us: “Following the shores of Long Island, they came first to Block Island, and thence to the harbor of Newport. Here they stayed fifteen days, most courteously received by the inhabitants. Among others, appeared two chiefs, gorgeously arrayed in painted deer-skins; kings, as Vezzerano calls them, with attendant gentlemen; while a party of squaws in a canoe, kept by their jealous lords at a safe distance, figure in the narrative as the queen and her maids. The Indian wardrobe had been taxed to its utmost to do the strangers honor,—coffee bracelets and wampum collars, lynx-skins, raccoon-skins, and faces bedaubed with gaudy colors. “Again they spread their sails, and on the fifth of May bade farewell to the primitive hospitalities of Newport.” Wampum and coffee bracelets are gone out of fashion since then, the application of “gaudy colors” to faces, though not altogether done away with, is differently practised and to better effect, and squaws are no longer relegated by their jealous lords to separate and distant canoes; but the reputation for hospitality, so early won, Newport still retains, as many a traveller since Vezzerano has had occasion to testify. And still, when the early summer-tide announces the approach of strangers, her inhabitants, decking themselves in their best and bravest, go forth to welcome and to “courteously entreat” all new arrivals. Again the mist lifts and reveals another picture. Two centuries have passed. The sachems and their squaws have vanished, and on the hill-slope where once their lodges stood a town has sprung up. Warehouses line the shores and wharves, at which lie whalers and merchantmen loading and discharging their cargoes. A large proportion of black faces appears among the passers-by in the streets, The Berkeley party spent the first few The estate, which comprised less than a hundred acres, lies in a grassy valley to the south of Honeyman’s Hill, and about two miles back Three years the peaceful life of Whitehall continued. Two children were born to the Bishop, one of whom died in infancy. The house was a place of meeting for all the missionaries of the island, as well as for the more thoughtful and cultivated of the Newport society. At last, in the winter of 1730, came the crisis of the Bermuda scheme. Land had been purchased, the grant of money half promised by the English Government was due. But the persuasive charm of the founder of the enterprise was no longer at hand to influence those who had the power to make or mar the project; and Sir Robert Walpole, with that sturdy indifference to pledge, or to other people’s convenience, which distinguished him, intimated with fatal clearness of meaning, that if Dean Berkeley was waiting in Rhode Island for twenty thousand pounds of the public money to be got out of his exchequer, he might as well return to Europe without further loss of time. The bubble was indeed broken, and Berkeley, brave still and resolutely patient under this heavy blow, prepared for departure. His books he left as a gift to the library of Yale College, and his farm of Whitehall was made over to the same institution, to found three scholarships for the encouragement of Greek and Latin study. These bequests arranged, his wife and their one remaining child sailed for Ireland. There, a bishopric, and twenty years of useful and honorable labor, awaited him, and the brief dream of Rhode Island must soon have seemed a dream indeed. Few vestiges remain now of his sojourn,—the shabby farmhouse once his home, the chair in which he sat to write, a few books and papers, the organ presented by him to Trinity Church, a big family portrait by Smibert, and, appealing more strongly to the imagination than these, the memory of his distinguished name as a friend of American letters, still preserved The traveller who to-day is desirous of visiting Whitehall may reach it by the delightful way of the beaches. Rounding the long curve of the First Beach, with its dressing-houses and tents, its crowd of carriages and swarms of gayly clad bathers, and climbing the hill at the far end, he will find himself directly above the lonely but far more beautiful Second Beach. Immediately before him, to the left, he will see Bishop Berkeley’s Rock, with its cliff-hung shelf, and beyond, the soft outlines of Sachuest Point, the narrow blue of the East Passage, and a strip of sunlit mainland. The breezy perch where Alciphron was written is on the sea-face of one of the parallel rock-formations which, with their intervening valleys, make up the region known as “Paradise Rocks.” Near by, in the line of low cliffs which bounds the beach to the southward, is the chasm called “Purgatory,” a vertical fissure some fifty feet in depth, into which, under certain surrounded the chimney-piece of the parlor. But the parlor remains unchanged, with its low ceiling and uneven floor; the old staircase is there, the old trees, and, in spite of the tooth of time and the worse spoliation of man, enough is left to hint at the days of its early repute and to make the place worth a visit. One more glimpse through the mist before we come to the new times of this our Isle of Peace. It is just half a century since Berkeley, his baffled scheme heavy at his heart, set sail for Ireland. The fog is unusually thick, and lies like a fleece of wool over the sea. Absolutely nothing can be seen, but strange sounds come, borne on the wind from the direction of Block Island—dull reports as of cannon signals; and the inhabitants of Newport prick up their ears and strain their eyes with a mixture of hope and terror; for the French fleet is looked for; English cruisers have been seen or suspected hovering round the coast, and who knows but a naval engagement is taking place at that very moment. By and by the fog lifts, with that fantastic deliberation which distinguishes its movements, and presently stately shapes whiten the blue, and, gradually nearing, reveal themselves as the frigates Surveillante, Amazone and GuÊpe, The Duke of Burgundy, and The Neptune, “doubly sheathed with copper”; The Conquerant, The Provence, The EveillÉ, also “doubly sheathed with copper”; The Lazon and The Ardent, convoying a host of transports and store-ships; with General Rochambeau and his officers on board, besides the regiments of Bourbonnais, Soissonais, Saintonge and Royal Deux Ponts, five hundred artillerists and six hundred of Lauzan’s Legion, all come to aid the infant United States, then in the fourth year of their struggle for independence. Never was reinforcement more timely or more ardently desired. We It is from Blanchard that we learn of the three months’ voyage; of sighting now and again the vessels of the English squadron; of the Chevalier de Fernay’s refusal to engage them, he being intent on the safe-conduct of his convoy; of the consequent heart-burnings and reproaches of his captains, which, together with the stings of his own wounded pride, resulted in a fever, and subsequently in his death, recorded on the tablet which now adorns the vestibule of Trinity Church. The town was illuminated in honor of the fleet. “A small but handsome town,” says Blanchard, “and the houses, though mostly of wood, are of an agreeable shape.” The first work of the newly arrived allies One of his criticisms on the national characteristics strikes us oddly now, yet has its interest as denoting the natural drift and result of the employment of a debased currency. “The Americans are slow, and do not decide promptly in matters of business,” he observes. “It is not easy for us to rely upon their promises. They love money, and hard money; it is thus they designate specie to distinguish it from paper money, which loses prodigiously. This loss varies according to circumstances and according to the provinces.” Later we hear of dinners and diners: “They do not eat soups, and do not serve up ragouts at their dinners, but boiled and roast, and much vegetables. They drink nothing but cider and Madeira wine with water. The dessert is composed of preserved quinces and pickled sorrel. The Americans eat the latter with the meat. They do not take coffee immediately after dinner, but it is served three or four hours afterward with tea; this coffee is weak, and four or five cups are On the 5th of March, 1781, General Washington arrived in Newport. Blanchard thus records his first impressions of the commander-in-chief: “His face is handsome, noble and mild. He is tall—at the least, five feet eight inches (French measure). In the evening I was at supper with him. I mark, as a fortunate day, that in which I have been able to behold a man so truly great.” After the war came a period of great business depression, in which Newport heavily shared. The British, during their occupation of the town, had done much to injure it. Nearly a thousand buildings were destroyed by them on the island; fruit-and shade-trees were cut down, the churches were used as barracks, and the Redwood Library was despoiled of its more valuable books. Commerce was dead; the suppression of the slave-trade reduced many to poverty, and the curse of paper money—to which Rhode Island clung after other States had abandoned it—poisoned the very springs of public credit. Brissot de Warville, in the record of his journey “performed” through the United States in 1788, draws this melancholy picture of Newport at that time: “Since the peace, everything is changed. The reign of solitude is only interrupted by groups of idle men standing, with folded arms, at the corners of the streets; houses falling to ruin; miserable shops, which present nothing but a few coarse stuffs, or baskets of apples, and other articles of little value; grass growing in the public square, in front of the court of justice; rags stuffed in the windows, or hung upon hideous women and lean, unquiet children.” Count Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, writing ten years later, calls the place “cette ville triste et basse,” and further ventures on this remarkable criticism of its salubrity: “The healthfulness of the city of Newport and its environs is doubtless the result of the brilliancy and coolness of its climate, but this coolness proves fatal to its Whether this statement of Count Rochefoucauld’s bears the test of examination would be impossible now to determine, for the century since his visit has made changes in the city of the dead as marked as those effected in the city of the living. But the “cool and brilliant” air with which he finds fault has since been proved by many invalids to be full of health-giving properties. Consumptives are more often sent to Newport for cure, nowadays, than away from it. Asthma, diseases of the chest and throat, nervous disorders, insomnia, excitability of brain, are in many cases sensibly benefited by the island climate, which, however, is less “brilliant” than sedative. This is attributed to the relaxing effects of the Gulf Stream, which is popularly supposed to make an opportune curve toward the shore and to produce a quality of air quite different from that of other New England seaside climates It was not till about the year 1830 that the true source of Newport’s prosperity was realized to be her climate. Since then she has become more and more the Mecca of pilgrims from all parts of the country. Year by year, the town has spread and broadened, stretching out wide arms to include distant coigns of vantage, until now the summer city covers some miles in extent, and land, unsalable in the early part of the century, and but twenty years ago commanding little more than the price of a Western homestead, is now valued at from A walk in the older and more thickly settled parts of the town is not without its rewards. There are to be found well-known objects of interest,—the Jewish burial-ground, with its luxurious screen of carefully tended flowers; the Redwood Library, rich in old books and the possession of the finest cut-leaved beech on the island; and the old Stone Mill, on which so much speculative reasoning in prose and verse has been lavished. Some years ago, those ruthless civic hands which know neither taste nor mercy, despoiled the mill of the vines which made it picturesque, but even thus denuded, it is an interesting object. There is old Trinity, with its square pews and burial tablets, and a last-century “three-decker” pulpit, with clerk’s desk, reading-desk and preaching-desk, all overhung by a conical sounding-board of extinguisher pattern—a sounding-board on which whole generations of little boys have fixed fascinated eyes, wondering in case Winter or summer, the charm which most endears Newport to the imaginative mind is, and must continue to be, the odd mingling of old and new which meets you on every hand. A large portion of the place belongs and can belong to no other day but our own, but touching it everywhere, apart from it but of it, is the past. It meets you at every turn, in legend or relic or quaint traditionary custom still kept up and observed. Many farm-hands and servants on the island still date and renew their contracts of service from “Lady-Day.” The “nine-o’clock bell,” which seems derived in some dim way from the ancient curfew, is regularly rung. The election parade, dear to little boys and peanut-venders, has continued to be a chief event every spring, with its procession, its drums, its crowd of country visitors, the place, of family romance and family tragedy, or tragedy just escaped. What could be finer contrast than tales like these, told on a street-corner where, just before, perhaps, the question had been about Wall Street or Santiago, if the French frigate were still in the bay, or when would be the next meeting of the Town and Country Club! Indeed, it is not so many years since visitors to Newport might have held speech with a dear old lady whose memory carried her back clearly and distinctly to the day when, a child six years old, she sat on Washington’s knee. The little girl had a sweet voice. She sang a song to the great man, in recompense for which he honored her In a country whose charm and whose reproach alike is its newness, and to a society whose roots are forever being uprooted and freshly planted to be again uprooted, there is real education and advantage in the tangible neighborhood of the past; and the Newport past is neither an unlovely nor a reproachful shape. There is dignity in her calm mien; she looks on stately and untroubled, and compares and measures. The dazzle and glitter of modern luxury do not daunt her: she has seen splendor before in a different generation and different forms, she has shared it, she has watched it fade and fail. Out of her mute, critical regard, a voice seems to sound in tones like the rustle of falling leaves in an autumn day, and to utter that ancient and melancholy truth, Vanitas vanitatum! “The fashion of this world passeth away.” We listen, awed for a moment, and then we smile again,—for brightness |