In 1803-4, Thomas Moore, the distinguished poet, travelled on this continent. The record of his tour took the form, not of a journal in prose, but of a miscellaneous collection of verses suggested by incidents and scenes encountered. These pieces, addressed many of them to friends, appear now as a subdivision of his collected works, as Poems relating to America. The society of the United States in 1804 appears to have been very distasteful to him. He speaks of his experience somewhat as we may imagine the winged Pegasus, if endowed with speech, would have done of his memorable brief taste of sublunary life. Writing to the Hon. W. R. Spencer, from Buffalo,--which he explains to be "a little village on Lake Erie,"--in a strain resembling that of the poetical satirists of the century which had just passed away, he sweepingly declares-- "Take Christians, Mohawks, Democrats, and all, From the rude wigwam to the congress-hall, From man the savage, whether slav'd or free, To man the civilized, less tame than he,-- 'Tis one dull chaos, one unfertile strife Betwixt half-polished and half-barbarous life; Where every ill the ancient world could brew Is mixed with every grossness of the new; Where all corrupts, though little can entice, And nought is known of luxury, but its vice!" He makes an exception in a note appended to these lines, in favour of the Dennies and their friends at Philadelphia, with whom he says, "I passed the few agreeable moments which my tour through the States afforded me." These friends he thus apostrophises:-- "Yet, yet forgive me, oh! ye sacred few, Whom late by Delaware's green banks I knew: Whom known and loved thro' many a social eve, 'Twas bliss to live with, and 'twas pain to leave. Not with more joy the lonely exile scann'd The writing traced upon the desert's sand, Where his lone heart but little hoped to find One trace of life, one stamp of human kind; Than did I hail the pure, th' enlightened zeal, The strength to reason and the warmth to feel, The manly polish and the illumined taste, Which, 'mid the melancholy, heartless waste, My foot has traversed, oh! you sacred few, I found by Delaware's green banks with you." After visiting the Falls of Niagara, Moore passed down Lake Ontario, threaded his way through the Thousand Islands, shot the Long Sault and other rapids, and spent some days in Montreal. The poor lake-craft which in 1804 must have accommodated the poet, may have put in at the harbour of York. He certainly alludes to a tranquil evening scene on the waters in that quarter, and notices the situation of the ancient "Toronto." Thus he sings in some verses addressed to Lady Charlotte Rawdon, "from the banks of the St. Lawrence." (He refers to the time when he was last in her company, and says how improbable it then was that he should ever stand upon the shores of America):