It is about forty miles from Plymouth to Newport, Rhode Island, one of the ultra-fashionable summer seaside resorts, and thither our artist repaired to take views of that vicinity. Newport is not only famous for its fine bathing beach, elegant villas, and its harbor specially adapted for yacht-racing; there is much more to recommend the city to visitors than these means of recreation and pleasant vanities. Commercially, Newport is a metropolis of looms; historically, it is a city of great consequence; and scenically, a place of extraordinary interest. The Old Tower at Newport has been for centuries an object of curious inquiry and patient investigation. For many years the opinion obtained generally that it was a relic of the Norsemen’s discovery and occupation of the country, five hundred years before the time of Columbus, and that in some way the building was connected with Druidic worship. The Druids of England and France performed their religious ceremonies under oak trees and always in the open air, but this fact did not affect the belief current for so long a time that the Stone Tower was the remains of either an edifice or a monument erected by the Druids. When this opinion finally changed to the more reasonable though equally false one that the tower was the relic of a fort built by Norsemen sea-kings about the year 985, historians appeared to be satisfied and inquiry ceased for a long while. Finally, investigation of the Runic inscriptions on the Dighton Rock, in Massachusetts, revived curiosity in the tower, and the result of the last investigation is the opinion that it is the ruins of a wind- mill that was built some time in the seventeenth century. The truth, however, may as well be told, that notwithstanding what historians say to the contrary, no one knows, or is likely ever to know, when, by whom, or for what purpose the so-called tower was built. It is a question about which there can be nothing but speculation. [Illustration: SOLDIERS’ MONUMENT ON EAST ROCK, NEW HAVEN, CONNECTICUT.]