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dignity, but it was yet destined to connect its name with the most illustrious events of the war of 1812. The father of Commodore Decatur was a native of Newport; but Oliver Hazard Perry-descendant in the sixth degree of Thomas Hazard, one of the earliest settlers of the island, and whose name has long been honorably borne by one of the most distinguished families in the State-was born in Newport in 1785. He entered the navy in 1798, and served in the expedition against Tripoli. In 1812, the United States declared war against England; and on the 6th of December of that year, Captain Stephen Decatur, commanding the United States, brought into the harbor of Newport the British frigate Macedonian. During the winter a fleet of gun-boats was stationed at Newport, commanded by Perry. But he wished ardently to engage the enemy directly, and applied for and obtained the command upon Lake Erie. "The work Captain Perry had to do was, first, to create a fleet, and then with that fleet to beat the British fleet-work enough for a young man of twentyseven." On the morning of the 10th of September, 1813, he sailed from the harbor of the little town of Erie, with nine vessels and fiftyfour guns, to meet the English force of six vessels and sixty-three guns. That day and the dispatch of Perry-"We have met the enemy, and they are ours"-are known with pride by every school-boy now. On the 10th of September, 1853, the citizens of Newport celebrated the fortieth anniversary of that great and decisive battle. George H. Calvert, the first mayor of the city under

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the new charter, and well known to literary fame by his books of European observation, delivered an address, remarkable among such performances for its clearness of narration and power of presentation, which comprises by far the best account of the battle. On that day six survivors of the 10th of September, 1813, were present in the church, and the orator's allusion to them thrilled the assembly to enthusiasm, and the occasion well deserves mention even in these slight annals of Newport. "These our fellow-citizens, who now modestly face this assemblage, the objects of its deep interest and sympathy, it is by the watch just forty years to an hour, since, each one at his post, doing there his brave duty, they faced on Lake Erie the cannon of the enemy. For us, it will be for the rest of our lives a grateful remembrance, that, preferred before all others, we have been permitted here to behold these brave men;

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COMMODORE PERRY'S HOUSE.

and for ourselves, and for all the twenty-five mil- | lions of our countrymen, for whom they fought that strong fight, to greet them, and to thank them." Commodore Perry, after the battle of Lake Erie, bought the "Perry House," upon the Parade, in Newport. He died August 23d, 1819, of yellow fever, on board the United States schooner Nonsuch, at Trinidad, aged thirty-four years. His body was brought to Newport, in the sloop of war Lexington, in November, 1826, and on the 4th of December was honorably interred. All the Newporters did their duty manfully through the war; and the conduct of one among them, at the battle of Lake Erie, showed with what spirit England was hopelessly contending. The mate of the Lawrence, just as the ships were going into action, said to one of the sick-Wilson Mays, of Newport

"Go below, Mays; you are too weak to be here."

"I can do something, sir." "What can you do?" "I can sound the pump, sir, and let a strong man go to the guns." "He sat down by the pump and sent the strong man to the guns; and when the fight was ended, there he was found with a ball through his heart." Perry was handsome and graceful. He had a noble frankness of character, and was the type of a naval hero.

In 1808, coal was discovered upon the island, and a lawyer in New York having examined some specimens, was solicited for his opinion. "At the general conflagration of the universe," he replied, "the most secure place to be found would be the coal mine at Portsmouth, Rhode Island." The vein was never extensively worked after that opinion.

Longfellow has founded his heroic ballad of the same name.

The Viking escapes with his mistress from her forbidding father and the Norsemen :

"Three weeks we westward bore,
And, when the storm was o'er,
Cloud-like we saw the shore,

Stretching to leeward;
There, for my lady's bower,
Built I the lofty tower,
Which, to this very hour,

Stands, looking seaward."

The old mill is about seventy-five feet above the high-water level in the harbor, and about a hundred and twenty rods from the shore. The earliest settlers make no mention of it, and this is quite sufficient proof of its erection since that period, as the original settlement of the town was very near the site of the building, and so remarkable an object would not have escaped mention by some of the profuse diarists of the times. In 1663, Peter Easton, one of the first settlers, says in his Journal, that the first wind-mill was built during that year; and, in 1675, it was blown down by a heavy gale. This fact would induce its reconstruction in a more solid manner. In 1653, Benedict Arnold, who was of a different family from that of the traitor, came to Newport from Providence, where he had had difficulties with Roger Williams and with the Indians. He settled in Newport, and was presently made Governor. He built a house upon a lot of sixteen acres, just in the rear of the present site of the Rhode Island Union Bank upon Thames Street, the eastern part of which includes the mill. Governor Arnold died in 1678, aged sixty-three years. His will is dated 20th December, 1677, and speaks of the lot upon which stands ". stone-built wind-mill." It would be very natural that Arnold, who was not in favor with the In

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which not only should look like a fort, but might actually serve as one, and especially as the windmill had just been blown down, he would wish to build securely.

Mr. Joseph Mumford stated, in 1834, when he was eighty years old, that his father was born in 1699, and always spoke of the building as a powder-mill, and he himself remembered that in his boyhood, say in 1760, it was used as a haymow. John Langley, another octogenarian, remembered hearing his father say, that when he was a boy, which must have been early in the eighteenth century, he carried corn to the mill to be ground. Edward Pelham, who married Arnold's granddaughter, in his will, dated in 1740, calls it "an old stone wind-mill."

We speak of the old days of Newport, and of its vanished glories. But there remains one monument which interests the poet, the antiqua-dians, would be quite willing to erect a building rian, the traveler, the controversialist, the divine; of which sweet songs have been sung, wild theories spun, and happy hoaxes invented. It is the "stern round tower of other days," the Newport ruin, the old mill. It stands upon a lot between Mill and Pelham streets, opposite the front of the Atlantic House. It tells no story itself, but it is suggestive of romantic legend, although there can be little doubt that it is only an old mill. A pamphlet published two or three years since in Newport, and understood to be written by Rev. Charles T. Brooks, the accomplished and genial scholar, the graceful poet, and pastor of the church at whose dedication Dr. Channing paid his interesting and beautiful tribute of remembrance to the island, contains the most lucid and comprehensive account of the structure. The society of Danish Antiquaries at Copenhagen had, upon the reception of some imperfect drawings, hastily decided that it was probably built in the twelfth century by the Northmen who coasted along the New England shore, and called the country Vinland, from the abundance of grapes. It is upon this romantic hint, and the discovery of "a skeleton in armor" at Fall River, upon the main near Newport, that

This is the direct historical testimony. The evidence from the material, form, and quality of lime, &c., is equally satisfactory. It was built of stone, because there were no saw-mills then upon the island to make boards, and because the material was ample and accessible. The shells, sand, and gravel for lime were equally convenient to use. In the year 1848, some mortar from an old stone-house in Spring Street, built by Henry Bull in 1639, from the tomb of Governor Benedict

Arnold, and from various other old buildings, was compared with the mortar of the old mill, and found to be identical in quality and character. The form is that of English mills at the period, with which the builders would be most familiar. In the Penny Magazine for November, 1836, there is a picture of a mill in Warwickshire, designed by Inigo Jones, who died in 1652, of which the form is quite the same. Old seacaptains and travelers testify to having seen hundreds of similar wind-mills all over the north of Europe.

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Its framework all fell ere a century waned,
And only the shaft and the millstones remained.
It was built all of wood,
And bravely had stood,

Sound-hearted and merry, as long as it could;

And the hardy old men

Determined that then

Of firm, solid stone they would build it again, With a causeway and draw,

Because they foresaw

It would make a good fort in some hard Indian war." The story of Newport is so sweet in the telling, that, like Scheherazade beguiling the night, the chronicler would willingly while away the sum

mer with his tale. But these annals must end. We have spoken of Newport as a gone glory-an ornament of the Past. But its present career is not less memorable in our contemporary social history. While the old town dozes on unchanged, more surprised, perhaps, than delighted, at the brilliant bustle which rattles through its streets for a brief summer season, a new town is rapidly arising upon the hill. A spacious and beautiful avenue has pierced the solitary fields along the ocean, so long given up to haystacks, lovers, and fishermen, and clusters of handsome houses now flash a welcome to the home-bound mariner still far out at sea; and swarms of equipages and gay groups of youth, beauty, and fashion, announce that the fine society which stepped stately, in brocades and periwigs, has only yielded place to another time and its children, not less beautiful nor less worthy of the spot. The secret of its old success, as a centre of pleasant society from all parts of the country, is

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Vague romance totters under these direct blows | equally that of its present prosperity. The deliof fact.

"Alas! the antiquarian's dream is o'er

Thou art an old stone wind-mill, nothing more!" sings Mr. Brooks in his poem of " Aquidneck." But the old ruin does not lose its interest. It is a permanent link with the earliest historical days of the island. It belongs still to as much romance as the poet can bring to it. No one has more fully proved it than the author of an admirable antiquarian hoax upon the building, in a series of letters professing to come from " Antiquarian," dating from Brown University, in 1847. He introduces the Danish theory, supported by reports of fabulous investigations by fictitious characters, which did not fail of provoking caustic correspondence, and finally achieving its triumph by eliciting a solemn denial, from Professor Rafn, of the Royal Society of Northern Antiquaries at Copenhagen, of the existence of such characters as Bishop Oelrischer, Professors Scrobein, Graetz, &c. Its true history, also, has been hinted in song by the laureate of Old Grimes, a Rhode Island poet, scholar, and gentleman, whose musical verses sum up the whole matter. It is the Song of the Wind-mill Spirits:

"How gayly that morning we danced on the hill, When we saw the old Pilgrims were building a mill.

*Albert G. Greene, of Providence.

cious climate, the advantages of sporting, and bathing, and social relaxation, which brought the people of a century since to Newport, and held them there, now draw their descendants. For many years, from 1815 to 1840, it was the resort of quiet Southern families, some of whom had summer-houses upon the island; and "Uncle Tom Townsend's," known simply as "Townsend's," and Miss Dillon's, upon the Parade, and Potter's old Bellevue, upon the site of the present large hotel, were quite enough for the other travelers, for the lawyers upon the circuit, and for the members of the Legislature. Newport did not readily yield to its greater rival, Providence, sitting regally at the head of Narragansett Bay, leaning either arm upon two tributary rivers. A young Newporter, thirty years ago, bred in the aristocratic traditions of the town, found, to his great contempt, that he could easily lift the chairs in Providence parlors, but in the ancestral rooms of old Newport were only colossal ancestral chairs, no more to be handed about by polite gentlemen than carven thrones. Newport disdained Providence as the Faubourg St. Germain scorned Louis Philippe and his modern dynasty. In its decay, when its population had fallen to some 6000, and its rival numbered nearly 30,000, Newport still divided with Providence metropolitan honors, and sent six representatives to the Legislature, while Prov

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idence sent only four. Even the present chron- | memory of Norton, their worthy companion. And icler can recall

"Eheu, eheu! Posthume! Posthume!" fine old Newport figures, gentlemen and scholars, worthy to call Hunter, Hazard, Randolph, King, Ellery, and others, ancestors.

From about the year 1840, and the erection of the "Ocean House" and the "Atlantic House," may be dated the renaissance of Newport. There is an immortal excellence in the air and the island which will not suffer it to fall into forgetfulness or complete decay. It will not cease to call its roll of famous names. If its traditions love to remember Berkeley and Stiles and Channing walking along its shores and fields, so will its future annalists associate with its history the

GLEN.

as the patriotic pilgrim watches from the Point the waters on which British power was first humbled by American freedom, and returns, pensive, through the streets that Washington walked, and by the house of Perry, he will be glad that our heroes shall not die unsung, and remember Bancroft, our great historian.

Newport is pre-eminently our Watering-place, nor is there any in the world superior in variety of charm. In Europe, the great German Baths are only other names for gaming-houses; the Italian resorts are lovely; Lucca and Castellamare, of which Willis gossips airily, are delightful. But the Baths of Lucca are shut in by mountains, and Castellamare, although upon the Bay

of Naples, is oppressed by Monte San Angelo, and wants the breadth and variety of Newport. In France and England the summer resorts are pleasant, but the peculiarity of a watering-place is too much lost in the extent of the towns. Töplitz, in Bohemia, is inland; Heliogoland is a small island in the North Sea, more curious than agreeable; the Tyrolean Baths at Ischl are romantic, and surrounded by magnificent mountains; and the Swiss Baths and those of the Pyrenees lie in narrow valleys, and want a refreshing horizon. At Baden Baden, the great Continental resort, you may see Rachel lose and win piles of Napoleons, and try your own fortune with Louis d'ors or sovereigns. But Newport has more natural advantages than any of

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LILY POND.

liest youth, at which time tradition did not reach to its first construction-and catch, for baking with wine-sauce, the tautog, famed fish of Rhode Island waters, which the unfortunate Abbé Robin ignorantly called tew-tag. Or, in more romantic and less fiercely piscatory moods, you will draw perch from Lily Pond, and saunter to the Spouting Horn, where, in storms, the sea dashes high in crumbling, glittering spires of foam-building in air a vast, blinding, momentary wall of unimaginable splendor of device and detail-a palace of exquisite faery heaved suddenly up

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them. Nor does it want similar seductions | ward from the volcanic emerald mine of ocean Superfluous money may be lost even in Newport-wavering, flashing, and gone. Or you go down -land of John Callender and Roger Williams. Its casinos do not blaze with colored lamps among orange trees upon the highway, as at Baden; but in quiet little streets, hiding in houses of a rusty dignity, lurk the fascinating spells: and there the youths-fondly supposed by mothers, aunts, and sisters, to be innocently polking with Clotilda, or discreetly flirting with Amanda-are toying with a more terrible mistress, and perfecting the jaded and insolent swagger which is supposed to indicate the man of the world. Sometimes the conscience, and not the stomach, is responsible for that morning headache.

Saratoga is our only rival of Newport, and Saratoga is always sure of a certain homage. But its unique hotels, its throng, its music, its dancing, its bowling, its smoking, its drinking, its flirting, its drives to dinners, and sunsets at the Lake, are not enough to equal the claim of Newport, which has most of these and more. Saratoga is a hotel, Newport is a realm. Saratoga will always be sure of its friends, for it has an actual and tangible value in its mineral waters and its fine hotels. Newport has no mineral springs, and its hotels are bad.

But the chief charm of a watering-place is not the beauty nor the fame of the spot. It has

the Forty-steps to Conrad's Cave, and babble Byron; or to the Point, and recall revolutionary tradition. But still, a watering-place is a theatre where the audience are also the actors. They play to themselves for their own amusement, and it sometimes happens that they do amuse themselves more than others. It has its legends, like other theatres-its tragedies and comedies. And if the portraits of our grandmothers, in their favorite parts of admired belles, are not hung up in its offices and parlors, it is because they are so vividly depicted by fond tradition. The grandchildren succeed to those parts, and play them quite as well. They sing the old songs to different tunes; they bowl with other beaux; they flirt with younger lovers; they dance with partners not yet gouty; they roam on the cliffs, and drive upon the beach, and ride at the Fort; they are not ante-revolutionary, nor are the lovers called De Lauzun, Viosmenil, De Broglie, or De Segur; but the plot is the same, and the play is not different, and the summer moon of this year sees as fair a spectacle as that of a century ago.

THE

THE HOLY WEEK AT ROME.
THIRD ARTICLE.

less to do with the place than with the people. ceremonies and labors of the Holy Week, one would suppose, were sufficient for the You profess, perhaps, to love scenery, and you wants of any clergy for the entire year. Not so go to Newport to walk on the cliff, and see sun-with the Roman Church. She proclaims and ensets; or upon the beach where Berkeley mused, forces the observance of some seventy distinct and where fishermen are now drawing seines; festas, or sacred days, besides Sundays. Nearly or to the lonely Purgatory Rock, of which the le-a third of the year is consecrated to idleness, gend is, that a lover was dared by his mistress to leap the yawning mouth of the chasm for her glove, and throw it in her face as he leaped back again, while with King Francis

'Not love, quoth he, but vanity,
Sets love a task like that."

You stroll along the cliff to the Bass Rocks, and
throw your line for sea or striped bass, or blue-
fish; or from Bateman's shore look across to
Gooseberry Island, whither Colonel John Malbone
was wont to repair, and with his friends fish, and
drink, and swim three times a day; or you go
out in tossing sail-boats with a grim old Newport
captain-who remembers the Boat-house from ear-

which vice is exalted to the rank of a virtue. I would exempt from this waste of time the periods properly belonging to divine worship, which of course are comprised within the duties of all men. But the Pope absolutely inculcates doing nothing on holidays, and denounces heavy penalties on the disobedient. The laboring classes, consequently, whose average daily gains are between a quarter and a half of a dollar, are compelled to abstain from all work, and take part in religious processions, or in witnessing superstitious rites, of a character to confirm their own vain predilections. Without the physical labors which the observance of these holidays forces upon the

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