Nowhere was there a more courtly and elegant society than in Newport.  The rules of etiquette were rigorously adhered to, and there was no jesting on so sacred a topic as the honor and respect due to those whom the good rector of Trinity was wont to allude to as moving in higher spheres.  De Segur a year or two later says of it:  “Other parts of America were only beautiful by anticipation, but Rhode Island was complete.  Newport, well and regularly built, contained a numerous population, whose happiness was indicated by its prosperity.  It offered delightful circles composed of enlightened men and modest and handsome women, whose talents heightened their personal attractions.”  To-day, Newport is the rendezvous of the best society of the land.  Handsome women and clever men meet and greet there, but can the society be more distinguished than, from this description, it must have been a century ago?  We wonder if the stately dames who in the eighteenth century held court here would quite approve of the laissez-aller of modern intercourse.  The youth of to-day, whose highest praise for his fair partner of the cotillon is often that she is “an awfully good fellow,” has little kinship with his ancestor, who used to wait at the street-corner to see the object of his devotion go by under the convoy of her father and mother and a couple of faithful colored footmen, thinking himself happy meanwhile if his divinity gave him a shy glance.  The gay girl of the period, who scampers in her pony chaise down the avenue from one engagement to the other, and whose most sacred confidence is apt to be that she adores horses and loves “pottering about the stable,” is, with all her charms, quite different from the blushing little beauty of 1780, who in powdered hair, quilted petticoat and high, red-heeled shoes gave her lover a modest little glance at the street-corner, thinking it a most delicious and unforeseen bit of romance to have a lover at all.  But other times other manners, and nineteenth-century men and women are no doubt as charming in their way as were our pretty ancestresses and their gallants of a century ago.

The prosperity of Newport received a check from the Revolution.  The English occupation resulted in a vandalism that destroyed the fine mansions, turned public buildings, and even Trinity Church, into barracks for the soldiers and stables for their horses, laid waste the country, cut down the trees and obliterated the landmarks.  Thus the French found it, and they were welcomed as possible deliverers and defenders from the English rule.  Rochambeau and his staff reached Newport in the frigate Hermione on the afternoon of the 11th of July, and the next day the troops were landed, many of them being ill and all in need of rest after the long voyage and cramped quarters.  The forts were put in possession of the French, who proceeded to remodel them into a better condition to resist a siege.  General Heath, hearing at Providence the news of the arrival of the fleet, came