Another benefactor worthy to be ranked with Abraham Redwood was Charles Bird King, whose portrait is hanging in the hall. At his death he made a munificent bequest of real estate, yielding nine thousand dollars, his valuable library, engravings, and more than two hundred of the paintings which now adorn the walls.
Among other portraits here are those of Bishop Berkeley in canonicals, and of Governor Joseph Wanton, in scarlet coat and periwig, his face looking as if he and good living were no strangers to each other; of William Coddington, and of a long catalogue of soldiers and statesmen, many being copies by Mr. King. The library suffered from pilfering during the British occupation: it now numbers something in excess of twenty thousand volumes.[267]
I admit the first object in Newport I went to see was the Old Stone Mill. I went directly to it, and should not venture to conduct the reader by any route that did not lead to it. I returned often, and could only wonder at the seeming indifference of people constantly passing, but never looking at it.
The Old Stone Mill stands within the pleasant inclosure of Touro Park, a place as fitting as any in Newport for the beginning of a sentimental journey. It is a pretty sight on a summer's evening, this green spot, dotted with moving figures sauntering up and down under the grim shadow of this picturesque ruin.[268] By moonlight it is superb.
THE OLD STONE MILL.
No structure in America is probably so familiar to the great mass of the people as this ruined mill. The frequency of pictorial representation has fixed its general form and character until there is probably not a school-boy in his teens who would not be able to make a rude sketch of it on the blackboard. For years it has been the toughest historical pièce de resistance our antiquaries have had to deal with, and by many it was supposed to embody a secret as impenetrable as that of Stonehenge.
The Old Mill was dozing quietly away on this hill, when, in 1836, the Society of Northern Antiquaries, of Copenhagen, declared it to be evidence of the discovery and occupation of Newport by Northmen, in the eleventh century. An historical chain was immediately sought to be established between Dighton Rock, an exhumed skeleton at Fall River, and this tower, of which the inscription at Monhegan Island was believed to be another link.
Common opinion, prior to the declaration of the Danish antiquaries, was that the tower was the remains of a windmill, and nothing more. In a gazetteer of Rhode Island, printed in 1819, is the following paragraph: "In this town (Newport) there is now standing an ancient stone mill, the erection of which is beyond the date of its earliest records; but it is supposed to have been erected by the first settlers, about one hundred-and eighty years ago. It is an interesting monument of antiquity."