William Coddington, whose name is preserved in various ways, but whose descendants are said to have been degenerate, founded Newport. He led a band of dissenters from the Puritan church in Massachusetts and bought Aquidneck from the Indians, starting his colony in 1639. Most of the earlier settlers, in fact, were people of various religious sects driven out of the strictly Puritan New England towns. Having abandoned England because they objected to a State Church, we are told that the Puritans forthwith proceeded to set up in Massachusetts what was very like a State Church of their own, and soon made it hot for the unbelievers. They drove out both William Blackstone and Roger Williams. Blackstone, when he had to go over the border and establish his hermitage at Study Hill on Blackstone River, said: "I came from England because I did not like the Lords Bishops, but I cannot join with you, because I would not be under the Lords Brethren." After Blackstone and Williams, many others came to Rhode Island and settled at Newport, for there they enjoyed the completest liberty of conscience. The Quakers were unmolested and came in large numbers; the Baptists flocked in and built a meeting-house; the Hebrews came, solid business men, originally from Portugal, and established the first synagogue in the United States; the sternest doctrines of the Calvinists were preached; the Moravians held their impressive love-feasts; and orthodox Churchmen fervently prayed for the English King. There were all shades of belief, and dissenters of all ilks, and many having no belief at all, so that the fair town on Aquidneck was pervaded with such an atmosphere of religious toleration and cosmopolitan irregularity that it became famous for its sharp contrast with the stern rigidity of New England. Hence it was not unnatural that at the opening of the nineteenth century President Dwight should have declared that an alleged laxity of morals in Stonington was due to "its nearness to Rhode Island." But despite these peculiarities the Newport colony got on well, so that the growing settlement on the "Isle of Peace" in time came to be designated as the "Eden of America." Dean Berkeley, afterwards Bishop, visited Newport in 1729, remaining several years, and gave the colony an elevated literary tone. An Utopian plan for converting the Indians brought him over from England, but he soon discovered that it was impracticable, and went back home to become a Bishop. His favorite resort is shown at the part of the Newport Cliffs called the "Hanging Rocks," and it is said he there composed his _Alciphron, or the Minute Philosopher_, and the noble lyric closing with the famous verse proclaiming the patriotic prophecy which Leutze made the subject of his grand mural painting in the Capitol at Washington: "Westward the course of empire takes its way." NEWPORT DEVELOPMENT.