ns according to individual preferences. For
behind that well understood signal of the bells is the typical
institution then in its palmiest days--the "Market Ordinary." Leaving
the market to the cheap jacks and ballad mongers, the solid element of
the market day gives a jovial account of itself in the market rooms of
the well-filled hostelries--now learning from the paper the news, so
far as it concerned prices and the continuation of war--now discussing
crops with a loyalty to the three-course system which no enclosures had
yet upset--now with equal loyalty toasting "the King, God bless him,"
and generally disposing of enough liquid to make the ride home behind
Dobbin a self-satisfied consummation, finding expression in snatches of
the old chorus--

To plough and to sow,
And to reap and to mow,
And to be a Farmer's Boy!

Ah, me! who would not be jolly with a good market this week and the
prospect of higher prices next?--with the guarantee of the State that
the farmer should not have less than 70s. a quarter, and the certainty
of higher prices if the war lasted! But these farmers in the leather
breeches and top boots--these self-satisfied men are already in the
fading glory of the "Good Old Times"--always applying those words, in
so far as they have any meaning at all, chiefly to the farming and
land-owning classes. Before the century is much older we shall see the
same class harrassed, embarrassed, and eaten up by a rotten and immoral
poor law system, about to be mended, and their prospect of high prices
growing less and less, as sliding scales and all artificial props are
removed out of the way of things finding their own level--down, down,
down towards the present unsupportable level of prices when the
consumer has as complete a monopoly of advantages as had the producer
in the old days!

But it was not only of the results, but of the place itself also, that
the farmer had a pleasant memory. So much attached were its habitues
{110} to the old style of an open corn market that when, in later
times, the Corn exchange came, many complained that they could not tell
a good sample of corn in a building like that, so well as in the open
air. Indeed, so wedded were they to the old custom of open market that
when the Corn Exchange was erected by the then Lord Dacre, they showed
such an obstinate preference for the open market and the convenience of
the inns, that they refused for some time to use the new bui