The scenery of Lake George is superb, the inn remarkably spacious and well attended, and the conveyances from thence to Saratoga very good. He must be sorely afflicted with spleen and jaundice who, on his arrival at Saratoga, remarks there is nothing here worth coming to see. It is a gay and fashionable place; has four uncommonly fine hotels; its waters for medicinal virtues are surpassed by none in the known world; and it is resorted to throughout the whole of the summer by foreigners and natives of the first consideration. Saratoga pleased me much; and afforded a fair opportunity of forming a pretty correct idea of the gentry of the United States.
There is a pleasing frankness and ease and becoming dignity in the American ladies, and the good humour and absence of all haughtiness and puppyism in the gentlemen must, no doubt, impress the traveller with elevated notions of the company who visit this famous spa.
During my stay here all was joy and affability and mirth. In the mornings the ladies played and sang for us; and the evenings were generally enlivened with the merry dance. Here I bade farewell to the charming family in whose company I had passed so many happy days, and proceeded to Albany.
The stage stopped a little while in the town of Troy. The name alone was quite sufficient to recall to the mind scenes long past and gone. Poor King Priam! Napoleon's sorrows, sad and piercing as they were, did not come up to those of this ill-fated monarch. The Greeks first set his town on fire and then began to bully:
Incensâ Danai dominantur in urbe.
One of his sons was slain before his face: "ante ora parentum, concidit." Another was crushed to mummy by boa-constrictors: "immensis orbibus angues." His city was razed to the ground, "jacet Ilion ingens." And Pyrrhus ran him through with his sword, "capulo tenus abdidit ensem." This last may be considered as a fortunate stroke for the poor old king. Had his life been spared at this juncture he could not have lived long. He must have died broken-hearted. He would have seen his son-in-law, once master of a noble stud, now, for want of a horse, obliged to carry off his father up- hill on his own back, "cessi et sublato, montem genitore petivi." He would have heard of his grandson being thrown neck and heels from a high tower, "mittitur Astyanax illis de turribus." He would have been informed of his wife tearing out the eyes of King Odrysius with her finger-nails, "digitos in perfida lumina condit." Soon after this, losing all appearance of woman, she became a bitch,
Perdidit infelix, hominis post omnia formam,
and rent the heavens with her howlings,
Externasque novo latratu terruit auras.
Then, becoming distracted with the remembrance of her misfortunes, "veterum memor illa malorum," she took off howling into the fields of Thrace: