A considerable proportion of the guests who are at Saratoga in the earlier part of the season, proceed to Newport in time for the Fancy Ball which every year closes the campaign there. Newport increases in attractions. Its historical associations, fine atmosphere, beautiful position, and facilities for sea-bathing, fishing, sailing, riding, and other amusements, are continually drawing to its neighborhood new families, whose cottages add much to the beauty of the town, as they themselves to the pleasantness of its society; and for transient visitors no place in the world has better hotels or boarding-houses.
[Illustration: WHITE SULPHUR SPRINGS, VIRGINIA.]
After the season closes at Newport, and from her Ocean House the last unwilling traveller has taken his way, strewn with regrets, many linger at the more quiet summer haunts scattered through New-England and New-York, particularly at the rural and luxurious hotel of Lebanon--a country palace which a king might covet--filled always with good society; or go southward to the Virginia Springs, which have many attractions peculiar to themselves, and with their unique pastimes, their tournaments, field sports, &c., happily vary a summer's life commenced at the more northern watering places.
[Illustration: COLUMBIA HALL, LEBANON SPRINGS.]
[Illustration: MOULTRIE HOUSE, SULLIVAN'S ISLAND, NEAR CHARLESTON.]
The South Carolinians have this year seceded from the northern resorts, and those who do not go from Charleston to the up-country or to Georgia, may well be content with Captain Payne's spacious and splendid hotel on Sullivan's Island--the coolest and most agreeable place by the seaside we have visited, north or south, for years. From the south, and indeed from all parts of the country, parties go more and more every year to the Mammoth Cave, (of which we have in store a particular and profusely illustrated account), and up the great rivers and lakes of the west, all along which, first-class hotels, steamboats, &c., render travel as easy and delightful as on the old summer routes in the middle and eastern states.
--Thus we have taken our readers--some of whom haply cannot this season go by other ways--the circuit of the principal scenes of enjoyment to which the denizens of the hot cities are intent to escape through July, August, and September. If any have till this time hesitated where to go, possibly we have aided them to an election: certainly, we have led them cheaply along the fashionable tour.