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a description. When Franklin visited Newport, he saw such apparatus for the first time.

The combination of the three causes gradually | They respected Trinity Church, although they gave Newport a marked eminence among the converted the other churches of the town into chief American towns. A large foreign and riding-schools and hospitals. domestic trade arose. Increasing wealth and the The clock in the tower was made by William constant visits of polished strangers, imparted to Claggett, a Welshman, who lived for twenty its society a character of dignity and intelligence years in Newport. He also made the first elecwhich was remarkable at that period. At the com-trical machine ever seen in New England, from mencement of the eighteenth century, about half of the inhabitants were Quakers; and until nearly the close of the previous century, there had been only two "orders of Christians" in the town, Baptists and Quakers. In 1702, the first Trinity (Episcopal) Church was built; and in 1724, there were too many Episcopalians to be accommodated in the building. The present edifice was completed in "It was acknowledged by the people of

1726.

66

TRINITY CHURCH.

But the most interesting reminiscence of Trinity Church is its connection with George Berkeley, Dean of Derry, in Ireland, and the famous Bishop Berkeley of scholastic history, Pope's friend, who sang of him

"To Berkeley every virtue under heaven;" and of whom Bishop Atterbury said, "So much understanding, so much knowledge, so much innocence, and such humility I did not think had been the portion of any but angels, until I saw this gentleman." And Dr. Blackwell, author of the Court of Augustus: "I scarce remember to have conversed with him on that art, liberal or mechanic, of which he knew not more than the ordinary practitioners."

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Inoy Janelyn-Anninj

Berkeley is one of the most illustrious of the many famous names associated with Newport and Rhode Island.

He was born of English parents, in Ireland, in the year 1684. He had written a famous book before he was twenty, and in 1709 carried Locke's principles to their legitimate results, and denied the existence of matter, in two treatises which interested and astonished the scientific and philosophic world, and founded a school of metaphysicians. In February, 1713, Berkeley came to London, and the introduced to "learned and the great" by Dr. Jonathan Swift and Sir Richard Steele, then at the height of his prosperous

was

that day to be the most beautiful timber structure career. The Sir Richard of literary history, and in America." The original pastor, James Honeyman, died July 1750, a paralytic disorder" having "interrupted him in the pulpit" ten years before, but without impairing his understanding. In 1768, the new tower was built. In 1776 came the British, who staid until 1779.

the "Dick" of private delight, had just established the Guardian, to which Berkeley was one of the most frequent contributors, and at his house the young Irishman was made acquainted with the poet Pope, with whom he always afterward lived in the closest friendship. He went as Earl Peterborough's chaplain to Sicily, and 1729: "They all agree in one point, that the Church of there carefully saw and studied every thing England is the second best." upon the island. In 1715 he went abroad

Bishop Berkeley writes from Newport, April 24th,

of the savage Americans for £100 yearly. Swift writes to Lord Carteret, recommending Berkeley to his assistance, and says "His heart will break if his deanery be not taken from him and left to your Lordship's disposal;" and concludes by entreating "Your Excellency," either to "keep one of the first men in this kingdom for learning and virtue quiet at home," or to assist him "to

again, and visited Malebranche in Paris. The | per annum, and devote his life to the instruction French metaphysician was suffering with an inflammation of the lungs, which was so aggravated by the fury of his debate with the benign Berkeley upon the favorite theory of the latter, that it killed the "man of facts" a few days after. The young philosopher traveled for four years upon the Continent, and, returning to Sicily, accumulated rich material for a natural history of the island, which was all lost upon the home-compass his romantic design." Horace Walpole, ward voyage, and the plan abandoned.

Upon his first arrival in London, Dean Swift had introduced him to Mrs. Esther Vanhomrigh, the Vanessa of Swift's amours, who removed, a few years before her death, to Ireland, to enjoy the society of the Dean, but discovered, with dismay, that the Dean was enjoying the society of Stella. Mrs. Vanhomrigh thereupon altered her will, and left the whole of her fortune of £8000 to be divided between two executors, of whom Dr. George Berkeley was one. Upon examining her effects, Dr. Berkeley discovered a correspondence between Cadenus and Vanessa, which he destroyed, not, as he confessed to Dr. Delany and others, that there was any thing criminal in the letters, but the lady's style was too warm for the public eye. In 1724 he was made Dean of Derry, with £1100 a year; and in 1725 published A Proposal for the better supplying of Churches on our foreign plantations, and for converting the Savage Americans to Christianity, by a College to be erected on the Summer Islands, otherwise called the Isles of Bermuda.

In the course of this document, the good Dean enlarges upon the necessity of religious instruction for the negroes, and says of the planters that "their slaves would only become better slaves by being Christian." He says in another place: "It is further proposed to ground these young Americans (meaning Indians) thoroughly in religion and morality "-and they are to be "particularly" tinctured with "eloquence, history, and practical mathematics." All this was to be done by a seminary upon the Summer Islands, sometimes called the Isles of Bermuda, of which the philanthropic and poetic Bishop gives a delightful account. The reader little fancies, as he sees this name, that his author is speaking of Shakspeare's "still vext Bermoothes," and will naturally demand how islands lying in an equable latitude, and washed by a gentle sea, bearing the halcyon name of the Summer Islands, whose climate, "like the latter end of a fine May," so favored the growth of oranges that the region was famous for them, can also be the stormy scene of "The Tempest," famous as "still vext?" The explanation is simple. The islands are girded with a wall of rocks, and are accessible only by two narrow entrances. The sea, heaving and tossing upon the rocks, gives the region a stormy and forbidding aspect even in tranquil weather; and in Shakspeare's time the isles were supposed to be peopled by monsters and devils.

Upon the publication of this Proposal, Berkeley offered to resign his preferment of £1100

in his "Anecdotes of Painting in England," speaks of "the uncertain but amusing scheme of the famous Dean Berkeley, afterward Bishop of Cloyne, whose benevolent heart was then warmly set upon the erection of a universal college of science and arts for the instruction of heathen children in Christian duties and civil knowledge."

Sir Robert Walpole was ordered by the king to lay the plan before Parliament, and the sum of £20,000 was promised to the undertaking. The philosopher was married in August, 1728, and sailed immediately afterward for Rhode Island. The common, but incorrect, tradition* asserts that the captain of the ship was trying to find Bermuda, and failing to do so, sailed northward until he descried a land which was supposed to be inhabited by savages. It was Block Island, from which two men came off and told the officers and the Dean that Newport was near. But the ship sailed into the West Passage, beyond Beavertail Point, and anchored there. Berkeley dispatched a messenger with a letter to the Rev. Mr. Honeyman, pastor of Trinity Church in Newport, "informing them," according to Updike's History of the Church in Narragansett, "that a great dignitary of the Church of England called Dean, was on board the ship, together with other gentlemen passengers." It was a holyday, and Mr. Honeyman was at church. But the letter was delivered to him in the pulpit, and he read it aloud to the congregation. It was evident that the "great dignitary" might arrive at any moment. The church was therefore dismissed with the blessing, and Mr. Honeyman with his congregation, proceeded to the Ferry Wharf, and arrived in time to receive and welcome their guest.

A letter written from Newport, and published in the New England Weekly Journal in Boston, in the spring of 1729, says:

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Yesterday arrived here Dean Berkeley, of Londonderry, in a pretty large ship. He is a gentleman of middle stature, of an agreeable, pleasant, and erect aspect. He was ushered into the town with a great number of gentlemen, to whom he behaved himself after a very complaisant manner. 'Tis said he purposes to tarry here with his family about three months."

Soon after his arrival he purchased a farm of about a hundred acres, adjoining that of the Rev. Mr. Honeyman, from whom Honeyman's Hill takes its name. It lies about three miles from

* Berkeley writes to Thomas Prior, from Gravesend,

Sept. 5th, 1728: "To-morrow, with God's blessing, I set sail for Rhode Island...... Direct for me in Rhode Island."

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the town, upon the Green End Road. He there | island, and opens with a direct reference to his built a house and called it Whitehall, in memory, project of a college. Instead of detailing his disdoubtless, of the palace of Charles I., for which appointment he says, I rather choose......to king the Dean's family had suffered many trials entertain you with some amusing incidents, which and losses. have helped to make me easy under a circumstance I could neither obviate nor foresee." He speaks of "half-adozen pleasant fields planted round with plane-trees, that are very common in this part of the country." Crevecœur also, just before the Revolution, remarks the roads planted upon either side with acacias and plane trees; ornaments that fell with the prosperity of the island. In the second dialogue, the disputants, "after breakfast, went down to a beach about half a mile off, where we walked on the smooth sand, with the ocean on one hand, and on the other wild broken rocks, intermixed with shady trees and springs of water." And again: "So we changed the discourse, and after a repast upon cold provisions, took a

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WHITEHALL.

Witney Jocelyn's Annon Se

This house lies in the valley near a hill commanding a broad and beautiful prospect. He stated his reasons to be, that to enjoy the prospect from the hill, he must visit it only occasionally; for if his residence should be on the hill, the view would be so common as to lose all its charms.

Berkeley gives a pleasant account of his new home in a letter to Thomas Prior, from which we have already quoted his testimony to the charms of the Newport climate. "The provisions are very good, so are the fruits, which are quite negLected.......The town of Newport contains six thousand souls, and is the most thriving place in all America for bigness. I was never more agreeably surprised than at the first sight of the town and harbor." Whitehall is not far from the second, or Sachuest, beach, which is the Corso, the Hyde Park, the Cascine, the Bois de Boulogne, of the Newport "season." The low rocky and sandy bluff which lies along part of this beach is called The Hanging Rocks. The pleasantness of the situation, its neighborhood to him, and its solitude, naturally drew a musing scholar thither.

He had his chair and writing apparatus placed in a natural alcove, which he found in the most elevated part of the Hanging Rocks, roofed, and only open to the south, commanding at once a view of Sachuest beach, the ocean, and the circumjacent islands.

There is no doubt that, sitting and strolling among these rocks, the Minute Philosopher was meditated and composed. It is the last great work of Berkeley, and still remains great. Modeled upon Plato's Dialogues, of which he was a loving student, it "pursues the freethinker through the various characters of atheist, libertine. enthusiast, scorner, critic, metaphysician, fatalist, and skeptic."

It is full of allusions to the scenery of the

walk on the strand, and in the cool of the evening returned to Crito's." In sweet and simple colors he thus paints a picture which is still as fresh as when he saw it. "Here we had a prospect on one hand of a narrow bay or creek of the sea, inclosed on either side by a coast beautified with rocks and woods and green banks and farm-houses. At the end of a bay was a small town, placed upon the slope of a hill, which, from the advantage of its situation, made a considerable figure. Several fishing boats and lighters gliding up and down on a surface as smooth and bright as glass, enlivened the prospect. On the other side we looked down on green pastures, flocks, and herds, basking beneath in sunshine...... Here we felt that sort of joyful instinct which a rural scene and fine weather inspire."

It is to the first flush of enthusiasm in his project that we owe the famous ode, in which the poet, as of old, appears as the Prophet.

"Westward the star of Empire takes its way;
The four first acts already past,

A fifth shall close the drama with the day;
Time's noblest offspring is the last."
Charmed with his situation, he became gradu-
ally convinced that his college ought to be upon
the mainland, and he sought to have his charter al-
tered to that effect. "The truth is," he writes, . . . .
"I should like it better than Bermuda." But he
gradually perceived that his scheme had failed.
Sir Robert Walpole had evidently very little
intention of paying the £20,000 promised to the
undertaking, and the money was spent in a mar-
riage portion to a princess. But while success
was still uncertain-while, by his frequent resort,
he gave to Sachuest, or the second beach, that
human interest which a century later Channing
gave to Easton's, or the first beach, by confessing
that "no spot on earth has helped to form me so
much as that beach"-the society of Newport

used often to hear him preach in Trinity Church. as the "Redwood Library Company." The His preaching is reputed to have been "eloquent success of this movement informs us of the inand forcible," and drew large congregations to telligent tone of Newport society at that time. the church. The present pulpit of Trinity is the The names of Ellery, Ward, Honeyman, Uponly one remaining from which the good Bishop dike, Checkley, Hopkins, and Johnson (aftertaught. After his return to England, for which ward President of Columbia College, in New he departed in 1731-32, he sent to America an York), appear among the original members. organ, which is still in use at Trinity Church. The Newport was already metropolitan, although fine society of that time sleep around the simple small. "Men of opulence and leisure, from quaint old building which they thronged to hear different parts, made Rhode Island the place of him, and among them lies his daughter Lucia, their permanent residence; while it was every who died in September, 1731. The benign Bishop year the summer resort of a great number of in"though dead yet speaketh," if no longer from valids and men of leisure from the West Indies the pulpit of Trinity Church, yet his Minute Phi- and our more southern colonies. Although this losopher, read among the Hanging Rocks, shall be brought with it riches and gaiety, it brought with as good a sermon as was ever preached. Nor are it an evil-it introduced an high stile of living, its lessons more antiquated than vanity and extrav- and too frequent convivial meetings; and the disagance. What if the gay promenade should pause sipation of one season had hardly time to subside an instant and hear these words, whose sense seems before another commenced. Another serious not altogether obsolete nor inappropriate: "I evil cast a dark shade on otherwise a beautiful imagine that......the real cause of whatever is picture, we allude to the African trade for amiss may justly be reckoned the general neglect other purposes than bringing gold dust and of education in those who need it most, the peo-ivory!" says the delicate Dr. Waterhouse in ple of fashion. What can be expected where those who have the most influence have the least sense, and those who are sure to be followed set the worst example; where youth so uneducated are yet so forward; where modesty is esteemed pusillanimity, and a deference to years, knowledge, religion, laws, want of sense and spirit?" Such questions were asked by the most religious of philosophers upon Sachuest beach in 1730, and such was the substance of a Dean's discourses in Trinity Church.

A portrait of the Bishop and his family is preserved at Yale College. It was painted by John Smybert, an artist whom the Dean's eloquence tempted from England, and of whom President Ezra Stiles, one of the honored and historical names of Newport, says, that upon his landing in Newport he instantly recognized the Indians there (the Narragansetts) to be the same people as the Siberian Tartars, two of whom had been presented by the Czar of Russia to the Grand Duke of Tuscany, at whose court Smybert had painted them. Before he returned to England Berkeley gave part of his library to Yale College, and afterward sent out a thousand volumes, which President Clapp calls " 'the finest collection of books that ever came at one time to America." "He also," says Professor Goodrich, "sent a deed of his farm on Rhode Island, to be held in trust for the support of three students between their first and second degrees. In 1834 this farm of Whitehall produced about $150 rent, annually, which was regularly applied to the purpose.

Berkeley was contemporary upon the island with the Rev. John Callender, one of the famous Newport ministers, whose Historical Discourse is still as valuable to the student in our day as his life and conversation were to his friends in his

own.

Soon perceiving the character and attainments of his companions, Dean Berkeley is supposed to have suggested the formation of a Literary Society, which was afterward chartered

1821.

One of the finest figures in that stately society of old Newport is Abraham Redwood, from whom the Library was named. He was born in the island of Antigua, about the year 1720, and was educated in Philadelphia with due regard to his immense fortune and expectations. He married in Rhode Island before he was twenty years old, and lived there until he was about eighty, "in a style of opulence becoming his fortune, mixed with the elegant simplicity of the Quaker." His town-house and country-house were appointed with every refined luxury, and his munificence not only made his name famous by donations to public institutions, but inspired a hundred private charities which made it blessed. When he was yet a young man there were but two colleges in New England, at Cambridge and New Haven. In 1747, Mr. Redwood presented the Society £500 for the purchase of books, and £5000 were subscribed in the town to erect a building. In 1748, Henry Collins, one of the fine old Newport merchants, "the Lorenzo de Medici of Rhode Island," presented a lot of land to the Society, and the present building was completed in 1750, from the designs of Mr. Harrison, an architect long resident in Newport. The donation of Mr. Redwood was well spent, and the library was rich in classical and theological literature. So valuable was it in the latter respect, that Dr. Ezra Stiles, a famous theological name in New England, became its librarian for nearly twenty years; and, according to Dr. Waterhouse, often declared that he owed to that collection his great attachment to literature.

The building now shares with Mr. Parish's villa the chief architectural beauty of Newport, and holds a library of about six thousand volumes. It is buried in luxuriant foliage, quite hidden from Touro Street, upon which it stands, and an air of elegant repose, "the still air of delightful studies," forever broods over it.

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It was one summer morning about this time, in the year 1750, that some fishermen noticed at sunrise a vessel heading for the first, or Easton's beach, as if the crew were unacquainted with the shore, or were unable to manage their craft. She was presently "seen to be a brig, and came on with all sails set, and struck upon the northwest corner of the beach. The fishermen instantly boarded her, but found no living thing except a dog and a cat"-not even Hood's bachelor to sing to them,

"What do you think of that, my dog?

And what do you think of that, my cat?" In the kitchen the fire was burning, the kettle was boiling, and the table was spread for breakfast. Every thing was in its place but the longboat, which was missing. The brig was from Honduras, well freighted, and had been spoken only four days before she struck. She was got off, and was bought at auction by Henry Collins, the worthy old merchant, who called her the Beachbird, but her original name was never known. Nor did any tidings of her crew or their fortune ever come to land. Had they taken to the long-boat to escape, when they found themselves setting inevitably to the shore, they would certainly have soon landed and claimed their brig. Were they, perhaps, lost upon some treacherous reef, just as as they were gaining the shore? or had some bold buccaneer carried them off with their treasure, at dawn, within sight of shore, and then lighted the fire and made the quiet domestic arrangements which should deceive astonished landsmen?

The dark shade," of which the venerable Dr. Waterhouse speaks, is a blot upon the history of the flourishing days of Newport. Probably none of the northern colonies, certainly none in

proportion to its size, was so deeply engaged in the slave trade as Rhode Island. Many of the great fortunes of her merchants were amassed by that traffic. So late as the year 1804-8, when the ports of South Carolina were opened for the importation of slaves, there were, of 202 vessels employed in the traffic, 70 British, 61 from Charleston, and 59 from Rhode Island. From Boston there was one, and from Connecticut one, and no others from the present Northern States. Of the whole number of slaves imported, which was 38,775, there were 7238 brought in Rhode Island vessels, and 450 in all other New England craft. Between 1730 and 1750 the slave trade of Rhode Island increased with the West India trade, negroes being brought back as part of the return cargoes. Yet it seems not to have been countenanced by the Legislature, for so early as 1652, the practice of slavery is denounced, and to hold a slave more than ten years is made penal. In 1774 the importation into the colony was prohibited; and ten years afterward, it is provided that all children of slaves born after March 1st, 1784, shall be free.

At this time, 1730-50, the trade of Newport was very extensive. There were thirty distilleries constantly at work, and the rum was exported to Africa, and procured the slaves there. There were not less than forty or fifty vessels engaged in this traffic, and their owners were the leading merchants of Newport. The Quakers did not scruple to own them. Joseph Jacobs, an opulent old Newporter of that persuasion, had several slaves who "wore the plain garb of the Quakers." And a recent historian of Newport, Mr. Peterson, who has amassed a curious collection of historical facts, declares, that "to see the negro women, with their black hoods and blue

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