ENGLISH MARKETS. Increased Use of Horses-Economy of Agriculture-Market Costume; Habits; Merchandize-Popular LiteratureRecruiting Market Places-Markets for Servants. "FAIRS and markets belong to a state as yet little advanced in public prosperity, in the same manner that commerce by caravans belongs to a little-advanced stage of commercial relations; yet even this imperfect kind of relation is better than none at all." I do not know how M. Say, an author generally so judicious, came to forget, when he wrote this passage, that England, without question and in every respect the richest and most populous of states, has more fairs and markets than any other. It proves that political economy is not a cosmopolitical science, but something like that of medicine, in which the aphorisms that will apply to all cases are but few. There is no town in England which has not one or two markets every week, and two or three fairs for horses, cattle, cloth, cheese, &c. in the course of the year: the city of York alone has no less than fifteen horse and cattle fairs every year. Every English almanack contains the names of above three hundred market-towns, as these are called. To these markets resort not only the peasantry, but all the farmers, great and small, of the country-side, for at least ten miles round. It forms an interesting and animated scene: from earliest dawn to mid-day the roads leading to the town are covered with droves of cattle, flocks of sheep, foot-passengers, tilted carts, and countless numbers of mounted rustics. The country-folks use little covered carts, in which all the family, dressed in their best, sit at their ease. The dog, the most constant friend of man, follows the caravan, and takes charge of it, when the family leave it to do what they are come about. Most of these carts have no springs, because, if they had, they would have to pay the tax to which spring-carts are liable, according to the spirit of the English laws, which imposes taxes on an ascending scale, from comfort to luxury, and from luxury to superfluity. The head of the family, however, if he is a farmer, goes to market on horseback. It is pleasant to see these English farmers, mounted on fine strong horses, in little troops of five or six,* well clothed and fed, taking their way to the town at a brisk trot or full gallop, and in the evening, returning to the village, still rosier and jollier than in the morning. Their wives and daughters are often to be seen on horseback, riding with such elegance that they could not be distinguished from ladies, if they were not betrayed by their round anti-sentimental full-moon faces. The farmers are in almost every country the finest race of men, and in England this appears most strongly, from the contrast between them and the numbers of the population whose look is spoiled by the manufactures. There are * The most substantial class of farmers are called yeomen; it is of these that the yeomanry, or mounted national guard, is chiefly composed. as many races of men as there are different professions: what a difference between a sedentary watchmaker, in a heated atmosphere, peering through a microscope at a hair's-breadth of gold, and a farmer of England (or Lodi), with plenty to eat and drink, and continually in exercise in the wholesome open air! In Yorkshire, which produces the finest horses in England, I have often seen farmers mounted on animals that on the continent would be worth a hundred guineas. In some counties (and the custom used to be more general) the farmers carry their chaste better-halves seated behind them on the crupper: the Englishman puts the lady in the place of his portmanteau, while the Spaniard, more respectful, as well as more gallant, when he rides double, places the lady before him, supports her with the left arm, and in the |