In the summer of 1729 he moved from Newport to a quiet valley in the interior of the island, where he bought a farm, and built a house. In this island-home, named Whitehall, he lived for more than two years—years of domestic happiness, and of resumed study, much interrupted since he left Dublin in 1713. The house may still be seen, a little aside from the road that runs eastward from Newport, about three miles from the town. It is built of wood. The south-west room was probably the library. The ocean is seen in the distance, while orchards and groves offer the shade and silence which soothed the thinker in his recluse life. No invitations of the three companions of his voyage(20), who had migrated to Boston, could allure him from this retreat, where he diverted his anxieties about Bermuda by the thoughts which found expression in the dialogues of _Alciphron_, redolent of Rhode Island and the invigorating breezes of its ocean shore. Tradition tells that much of _Alciphron_ was the issue of meditation in the open air, at a favourite retreat, beneath the Hanging Rocks, which commands an extensive view of the beach and the ocean; and the chair in which he sat in this alcove is still preserved with veneration. While Berkeley loved domestic quiet at Whitehall(21) and the “still air of delightful studies,” he mixed occasionally in the society of Newport. He found it not uncongenial, and soon after he was settled at Whitehall he led the way in forming a club, which held occasional meetings, the germ of the Redwood Library, still a useful Newport institution. His own house was a place of meeting for the New England missionaries. [Illustration] Whitehall, Berkeley’s Residence in Rhode Island