The dean, it is said, told the painter, Smibert, who ventured to betray some distrust of his patron's sanguine belief in the future importance of Newport, "Truly, you have very little foresight, for in fifty years' time every foot of land in this place will be as valuable as in Cheapside." If he indeed made the remark attributed to him, he was only a century or so out of his reckoning.
The name and fame of George, Bishop of Cloyne, the friend of Swift and of Steele, the professor of an ideal philosophy, and the projector of a Utopian scheme for evangelizing and educating the Indians, is dear to the people of Newport. He came to America in 1728 with the avowed purpose of establishing a college, "to be erected on the Summer Islands," the "still vext Bermoothes" of Shakspeare.
Berkeley is perhaps more familiar to American readers by four lines—of which the first is as often misquoted as any literary fragment I can call to mind—than by his philosophical treatises:
"Westward the course 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."
WASHINGTON PARK, NEWPORT.
The residence of the dean at Newport was a forced retirement, the sum of twenty thousand pounds promised by Sir Robert Walpole in aid of his college never having been paid. In this college, "he most exorbitantly proposed," as Swift humorously remarked, "a whole hundred pounds a year for himself, forty pounds for a fellow, and ten for a student." Seven years were passed in literary pursuits; "The Minute Philosopher," of which no one who comes to Newport may go ignorant away, being the offspring of his meditations. Along with the dean came John Smibert, of whose canvases a few remain scattered over New England, and whose chief excellence lay in infusing the love of his art into such men as Copley, Trumbull, and Allston.[284] Pope assigns to Berkeley "every virtue under heaven." There is no question but that he was as amiable and learned as he was thoroughly speculative and unpractical.
The return to town by Honyman's Hill, named from the first pastor of Trinity, is thoroughly enjoyable and interesting. The historical student may here see how near the Americans were advanced toward the capture of Newport. An old windmill or two or a farm-house are picturesque objects by the way.
"I saw," says Miss Martineau, "the house which Berkeley built in Rhode Island—built in the particular spot where it is, that he might have to pass, in his rides, over the hill which lies between it and Newport, and feast himself with the tranquil beauty of the sea, the bay, and the downs as they appear from the ridge of the eminence. I saw the pile of rocks, with its ledges and recesses, where he is said to have meditated and composed his 'Minute Philosopher.' It was at first melancholy to visit these his retreats, and think how empty the land still is of the philosophy he loved."