“The healthfulness of the city of Newport and its environs is doubtless the result of the brilliancy and coolness of its climate, but this coolness proves fatal to its younger inhabitants, and the number of young men, and, above all, of young women, who die yearly of consumption is considerable. It is noteworthy that the inscriptions on the tombstones in the cemetery indicate in almost all cases that the person interred is either very young or very old--either less than twenty years of age or more than seventy.” Whether this statement of Count Rochefoucauld’s bears the test of examination would be impossible now to determine, for the century since his visit has made changes in the city of the dead as marked as those effected in the city of the living. But the “cool and brilliant” air with which he finds fault has since been proved by many invalids to be full of health-giving properties. Consumptives are more often sent to Newport for cure, nowadays, than away from it. Asthma, diseases of the chest and throat, nervous disorders, insomnia, excitability of brain, are in many cases sensibly benefited by the island climate, which, however, is less “brilliant” than sedative. This is attributed to the relaxing effects of the Gulf Stream, which is popularly supposed to make an opportune curve toward the shore and to produce a quality of air quite different from that of other New England seaside climates. Whatever may be the truth as to the bend of this obliging current, it is certain that something has given to the place an exceptional climate, pure, free from malaria and exempt equally from the fiercer heats of summer and the severer colds of winter. [Illustration: THE PARSONAGE OF MRS. STOWE’S “MINISTER’S WOOING.”] It was not till about the year 1830 that the true source of Newport’s prosperity was realized to be her climate. Since then she has become more and more the Mecca of pilgrims from all parts of the country. Year by year, the town has spread and broadened, stretching out wide arms to include distant coigns of vantage, until now the summer city covers some miles in extent, and land, unsalable in the early part of the century, and but twenty years ago commanding little more than the price of a Western homestead, is now valued at from ten to fourteen thousand dollars an acre! Every year adds to the number of cottages and villas and to the provision made for the accommodation of strangers. The census, which in winter counts up to less than twenty thousand, is during the four months of “the season” swelled by the addition of thousands of strangers, many of whom are in a manner residents of the place, owning their own houses and preserving their domestic privacy.