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More than half of the schools are graded. The following cities and towns have high schools, or schools of an equal grade, either public or private : Providence, Newport, Woonsocket, Pawtucket, Bristol, Warren, Westerly, Lincoln, East Greenwich, Barrington, Scituate, and East Providence. Children under 15 years of age employed in manufactories are required to attend school at least three months in the year. The state normal school is in Providence. Tuition is free to such as intend to teach in the public schools of the state. The number of instructors is 8; number of pupils in 1873-'4, 141. The most important institution of learning in the state is Brown university at Providence, founded in 1764. By a legislative act of 1862 it received the congressional land grant of 120,000 acres for the establishment of a college of agriculture and the mechanic arts. This has been sold for $50,000, and entitles the state to the gratuitous tuition of 30 students in those branches. In 1874-'5 the university had 11 professors, 4 instructors, 253 students, and a library of upward of 40,000 volumes. (See BROWN UNIVERSITY.) The number of libraries, according to the census of 1870, was 759, with 693,387 volumes, of which 425, with 383,691 volumes, were private, and 334, with 309,696 volumes, not private, viz. : 1 state, 1,500 volumes; 10 town, city, &c., 15,198; 5 court and law, 2,147; 12 school, college, &c,, 97,500; 248 Sabbath school, 116,441; 26 church, 11,160; 32 circulating, 65,750. There were 32 newspapers and periodicals, having an aggregate circulation of 82,050, and issuing 9,781,500 copies annually, viz.: 6 daily, circulation 23,250 ; 1 semi-weekly, 1,200 ; 19 weekly, 43,950; and 6 monthly, 18,650. The statistics of churches, according to the census, are as follows :

Geographers have recently fixed upon Rhode Island as the ancient Vinland, said to have been discovered by the Northmen about A. D. 1000 (see NORTHMEN); indeed, if reliance is to be placed on the Icelandic sagas, a criti- cal examination of them leads to this result. In 1524 Verrazzani, coasting eastward from a bay which has been identified as that of New York, passed up an opening into a large bay where he remained a fortnight. There is lit- tle doubt that this was Narragansett bay, and that he first came to anchor in Newport har- bor. He held a friendly intercourse with the natives, who visited his vessel in great num- bers. The country was then very thickly populated. Many have believed that the " old stone mill," an interesting ruin in Newport, long the puzzle of antiquaries, was the work of some of the early European navigators who followed Verrazzani, while the Danish antiquaries claim it as a work of the North- men. It was used for a grist mill by the settlers who accompanied Williams and Cod- dington to Rhode Island, and was probably erected by them for that purpose. The cele- brated Dighton rock, on Taunton river, a few miles from Mt. Hope bay, bearing a variety of strange figures, has been claimed by the Danish antiquaries as a memorial of the visit of the ancient Northmen under Thorfin in the 10th century. They have even gone so far as to attempt to trace out the name of this hero among the rude sculptures on the rock. Rhode Island was first settled at Providence (so called in grateful acknowledgment of " God's merci- ful providence to him in his distress ") in tho year 1636 by Roger Williams, who had been banished from Massachusetts for maintaining opinions in political and religious matters at variance with those of the rulers in that col- ony. He immediately put into practice the doctrine of liberty of conscience. In 1638 William Coddington and some others, who wore also persecuted and forced to leave Mas- sachusetts for religious opinions, deemed to be heresies there, purchased from the Indians the island of Aquidneck or Aquiday, afterward called Rhode island, and effected a settlement there, from which sprung the towns of New- port and Portsmouth. A third settlement was formed at Warwick in 1643, by a party among whom John Greene and Samuel Gorton were prominent. The same year Williams went to England and obtained a patent for the united government of the settlements, dated March 14, 1643-'4, which did not go into ope- ration till 1647. This patent remained in force till 1663, when a charter was obtained from Charles II., incorporating the colony of " Rhode Island and -Providence Plantations," which was the only constitution of government for 180 years. The great war between the English settlers and the Indian tribes of New England broke out in June, 1675. Rhode Island suf- fered severely from it. Many towns, villages, and farm houses were burned, and families