lishment of
great annual fairs, still imperfectly represented by our Wakes,
Statute-fairs, and periodical assemblages of itinerant vendors of goods.
These commercial re-unions are still common in the East, and still
frequent in Central Europe; although in England, where every hamlet has
now happily its general shop, and where the towns rival the metropolis in
the splendour of gas-lamps and the glory of plate-glass windows, such
Fairs have degenerated into yearly displays of giants, dwarfs,
double-bodied calves, and gorgeous works in gingerbread. To our
ancestors, with their simpler habits of living, supply and demand, these
annual meetings served as permanent divisions of the year. The good
housewife who bought her woollens and her grocery, the yeoman who chose
his frieze-coat, his gay waistcoat, and the leathern integuments of his
sturdy props, once only in twelve months, would compute the events of his
life after the following fashion:--"It happened three months after last
Bury or Chester Fair;" or, "Please Heaven, the bullocks shall be
slaughtered the week before the next Statute." Nay, dates were often
extracted, in the courts of justice, by the help of such periodical
memoranda. The Church of Rome, with its unerring skill in absorbing and
insinuating itself into all the business or pleasures of mankind, did not
overlook these popular gatherings. And if the ascetic Anthony, the
sturdy Christopher, or that "painful martyr," St. Bartholomew, minded
earthly matters in the regions of their several beatitudes, they must
have been often more scandalized than edified by the boisterous
amusements of those who celebrated their respective Feasts. In these
particulars, however, Ecclesiastical Rome was merely a borrower from its
elder Pagan sister. The Compitalia of ancient Rome were street-fairs
dedicated to the worship of local deities, and the Thirty cities of
Latium held annually, on the slope of the Alban Mount, a great fair as
well as a great council of Duumviri and Decuriones. To the ancient fairs
of Southern Italy we are indebted for one of our oldest and most
agreeable acquaintances. The swinging puppets of the Oscans were
gradually confined within a portable box, and danced or gesticulated upon
a miniature stage. Their dumb-show was relieved by the extemporary jests
and songs of the showman, until at length, one propitious morning, some
Homer or Shakspeare of the streets conceived the sublime idea of
embodyin