The fair was held in a large square piece of ground in one of the
suburbs, set apart for that purpose; and on each of its four sides a
long low building, or rather roof, supported on massy white columns,
extended about six hundred yards in length, and was thirty yards wide.
Immediately within this arcade were arranged the finer kinds of
merchandise, fabrics of cotton or silk, and articles of jewelry,
cutlery, porcelain, and glass. On the outside were provisions of every
kind, vegetable and animal, flesh, fish, and fowl, as well as the
coarser manufactures. At no great distance from this hollow square,
(which was used exclusively for buying and selling,) might be seen an
infinite variety of persons, collected in groupes, all engaged in some
occupation or amusement, according to their several tastes and humours.
Here a party of young men were jumping, or wrestling, or shooting at a
mark with cross-bows. There, girls and boys were dancing to the sound of
a pipe, or still smaller children were playing at marbles, or amusing
themselves with the toys they had just purchased. Not far from these, a
quack from one scaffold was descanting on the virtues of his medicines,
whilst a preacher from another was holding forth to the graver part of
the crowd, the joys and terrors of another life; and yet farther on, a
motley groupe were listening to a blind beggar, who was singing to the
music of a sort of rude guitar.
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