TRAVELLING EPISTLES.

I.

SARATOGA SPRINGS, Aug. 1848.

It is fashionable, as you very well know, very dear Dux, for people, who have been to the American Baiæ for a series of twenty or thirty years, to mourn bitterly about its changes. Disdainfully, or dolefully, they exclaim, that Saratoga is not what it used to be, in their day. "Ah præclarum diem!" That halcyon time of life, technically termed "our day," is something which we seem to pass through all unconsciously, and only to discover, when we have transfixed it with the Parthian arrows of memory. It extends over an illimitable period, embracing all the enjoyments known during the past century, and yet is talked of familiarly at thirty-five, as if at had gone by full ten years before. It is the great paradox of time; containing events enough for a considerable fraction of eternity, but occupying an impalpable part of the sum of human life.

One scarcely needs any satirical clearness of vision to suggest why certain people find Saratoga sadly altered. Pray, were not they belles then, with an admirer at each elbow and a third following behind like a footman? Did they not then wear their own hair instead of their present tresses, the rightful owners of which were under ground long ago? Were they not then under the surveillance of anxious mothers, whose main anxiety was, lest their daughters should not be kept sufficiently out of their sight by romantic and eligible young gentlemen? In other words, do they not see a different face and figure reflected in their mirrors from that they once blushed with pride to see, and has not Saratoga changed to them because they have changed to all the world? Old belles, who have at last been compelled to sound only a family tinkle, and call a dull husband to breakfast, or-heart-wrung-to toll a knell over dead and buried affections, are the quickest of all orders of beings at seeing change around themselves; the slowest to observe any change in themselves. On this account, they discover instanter that crowds of "upstarts" have succeeded

the "real gentlemen," who used to vie for their fair hands in the dances at Congress Hall: that hosts of ungenteel people, whom they do not know and have never heard of, and who manifest a strange indifference to their presence, have usurped Saratoga. Heigh-ho! what is so bad in utilitarian America, where people are never valued for what they have been, as to be out of date.

But Saratoga has changed, Dux. Some external matters remain as they were, I know. The gentle creeper still draws its light festoons of verdure around the tall white pillars of Congress and Union Halls. The number of legs and cigars ranged along the piazza remains about as large as ever. The same stereotyped simper is to be observed at Congress Spring, when a lady accepts a glass of detestable water from a gentleman who shapes himself into a parenthesis to offer it. Some faces even seem unaltered, since I saw them in my young days, as if dissolved magnesia, potash and iodine was to them the very Fountain of Youth. But look at Congress Hall, once the Pagoda of Fashion. How sobered is its once epicurean look! Would you believe it ?—it is a Temperance House, a Cold Water Establishment. Where the tincture of logwood and drugged cider once flowed under the generous names of port and champagne, the chances are that for the cholic you would be obliged to take essence of peppermint instead of burnt brandy. Washingtonianism is one of the parvenus who now flourish at Saratoga, although it must be owned that the bloated old nabob, Bacchus, holds his own very well yet. The accomplished artist in silhouettes has vanished, and a sevenby-nine ice-creamery and Congress-water-bottling establishment have succeeded the "Temptation of St. Anthony" and the gallery of black profiles. Billiard-rooms, nine-pin alleys and shooting galleries have increased indefinitely, and a congregation of blacklegs almost or quite outnumbers the votaries of fashion. A race of newspaper spies are now on hand, instead of that one correspondent who lived in mysterious incognito, and made up his judgments and delivered them with the deliberation and skill of a chancellor. These fellows are ready to puff the most commonplace faces and figures, always flatter the most forward and brazen women, and deal in a phantasmagoria of fine phrases, obsolete before you and I were born, about "mazy steps," "glorious eyes," "ineffable grace," and so on, when their theme is nothing

more than the modern ricochetting walk called a cotillion, or that irregular melée of revolving pumps (handles and all) called the "Redowa."

But the greatest change is in the people who frequent the great watering place. They are a fashionable Babel. They have not esprit de corps. They are perhaps as good people, on the whole, as ever came to Saratoga. They may have the same pretensions to dignity, gentility and esteem as the guests of former days. But they do not make that bundle of elegance, that association of true gentility, which was known years ago.

What has brought about these mischievous mutations? Listen! do you hear that piercing steam-screech, that clattering stationbell and rumbling train? Then you are answered. I tell you honestly that it is the railroad fiend, the iron centaur, that has changed the destiny of Saratoga. Although that railway is the most miserable extant, and travelling over it is a trip along the confines of the other world; although its rate of speed is a caricature on steam locomotion; and would hardly put Fulton's first steamboat to the blush; although I rejoiced heartily, when I heard that its old locomotive had been the other day converted by a smart smash into fossil remains; yet it has metamorphosed Saratoga. Come, Dux, you are a philosopher: so follow your old bachelor friend through his argument.

Any body, who wishes to travel, and can afford to pay the railroad fare and a board-bill of a day or two, is rather more likely, for curiosity's sake, to visit Saratoga than any other place. To enjoy the social intercourse of friends or elegant leisure is not in most cases the object desired. Once the difficulties of getting here, and the expense of a four or five days' journey from New York induced only such to come to the seat of fashion, as meant to stay. Pains were taken beforehand to secure a pleasant sojourn, by making up large parties of congenial and familiar friends. But now it is so easy to come, that friends take little pains to set out in company, and, so far from intending a stay, many hie hither only to look and leave. The consequence is, that an immense number of strangers are thrown together, to make the most of each other. People come, depending on chance to furnish them with acquaintances, in whom they expect to take a Saratoga interest and then forget. Having no knowledge of, and

therefore little respect for each other, they are as likely to select the worst as the best acquaintances, and to manufacture their enjoyment to order out of very slim materials.

Now what is the consequence? Throw a parcel of fashionable men and women utterly ignorant of each other together, and what will be the workings of human depravity? Of course, they will not, like the men who sprouted from the dragon's teeth sown by Cadmus, fall to and murder each other! But the same impulse of opposition and resistance will stir them.

ners.

They will regard each other in the light of fashionable enemies, who are trying to outshine them, and whom therefore they must try to outshine. The desire to "show off" will become universal at once, and smothered rivalries will be the general order of proceeding. To shine in dress will be one object, no doubt, and instead of coming down genteelly in plain morning attire, rich materials and jewelry will be seen flaunting in the parlors in the morning. But the great ambition for show will be exhibited in a perpetual pretence of enjoyment. "See, you stranger, what a fine time I am having," will be the dialect of motions and manAll the time will be spent in trying to seem to enjoy one'sself. I have seen a fair woman lean on the arm of one of the hirsute fops, whom I knew she in her heart despised, and wrench her sweet lips into a sculpture-like, stony smile, at his vapid nothings, (to which she was not listening,) merely to pretend to be in delectable company. Meanwhile, I have half-respected her, when she seemed to read the cold leaden look of contemptuous inquiry which I fixed upon her, and threw back to me one bright glance of intelligence. The loud laughter and voluble conversation I have heard this evening in the piazza of one of the hotels, have a hollow, hollow sound. If no spectators were by, those words and smiles would all be reserved. Nay, I have been convinced how real is this vulgarity, when I have seen persons from the same small township make each other's acquaintance for the first time at Saratoga, and strike up an intimacy, which to all appearances is as hearty and jocund as if Orestes had met Pylades after a year's separation. Even your great lady, who will cut him after they both get back to N

now makes an innocent

vender of dry goods her tool, for playing off before strangers her comedy of assumed enjoyment.

Do you remember, Dux, how different it once was; when the difficulties of coming hither were such as to keep away from Saratoga all those who did not expect to stay there? Now staying is the exception, not the rule. Curiosity, not love of society, is the motive of most modern visitors to Saratoga. Why, dear Dux, you must recollect, when parties of fifty or even eighty used to make arrangements in the winter at New York for a summer's visit to the Springs: when a passage for the company up the Hudson was engaged full a month beforehand, and the trip was enlivened, as Anthony and Cleopatra enlivened their voyage up the Nile, with music and dances; when stages were specially chartered to transport them over the rest of their route, and a long, merry and leisurely enjoyment of each other's society was the reward of their momentous journey. Then the picking-upsystem of making acquaintances was unknown, and a nucleus was formed for a joyous and harmonious society, which made week after week pass like a wedding-day.

I am aware that I am not writing in the usual vein of your travelling correspondent, and must leave philosophy to take to painting. Imagine yourself, then, by my side this morning, as I stood a silent observer at Congress Spring. For it is my chief delight at this place, (which I confess is not my element since the flower of my youth shed its petals) to watch, without a particle of sympathy, the droll realities and mockeries that pass before me.

Here comes an old lady, plump as a firkin, and I doubt not as unctuous, dressed in peony and marigold muslin, and weighing not far from two hundred pounds; and yet with as vigorous a waddle as ever a Dutch burgomaster of New Amsterdam broke into, at the approach of a Yankee peddler. You might know that she had not come to Saratoga for the sake of her own health, even if you did not see those two lean women in black, whom she is dragging ruthlessly along, one suspended on each elbow. How pale and reluctant are their faces, as they sidle ahead with forlorn submission. How flushed and triumphant is the face of the feminine Daniel Lambert, as she pulls her victims along, with an air which seems to say; "Come on, you little starvelings; get well; take exercise; you'll be as hearty and strong as I am shortly; don't you see what a blessed thing it is to be in good health?” And forward she strides, looking, on the whole, pretty much like a bull-frog escorting a pair of grass-hoppers.

You observe a male personage approaching with an impertinent