in malice or party-spirit, and consequently reduced litigation to
an examination of the very few cases in which actual injury had been
sustained.

Many a fair day have we witnessed in this quiet and thriving market
town. And it is sweet to us--yes, intensely sweet to leave, for a
moment, the hollow and slippery pathways of artificial life--of that
unfeeling, unholy and loathsome selfishness of heart, and soul, and
countenance, which marks as with a brand of infamy, the fictions of
fashionable and metropolitan society, where every person and profession
you meet, is a lie or a libel to be guarded against. Yes, it is pleasant
to us to leave all this, and to go back in imagination to a fair day in
the town of Balaghmore. Like an annual festival, it stole upon us with
many yearning wish, that time, at least for a month before, should be
annihilated. And when the fair morning came, what a drifting tide of
people, cows, sheep, horses, and pigs, passed on in the eager tumult
of business, before our eyes. The comfortable farmer in his best gray
frize; the young man in spruce corduroy breeches, home-made blue coat,
and bran new hat; the tidy maiden with neat bunch of yarn, spun by her
own fingers, giving sufficient proof to her bachelor that a young woman
of industrious habits uniformly makes the best wife for a poor man.
Various, indeed, were the classes that, in multitudinous groups, drifted
towards the fair green. The spruce, well-mounted horse-jockey, with
bottle-green coat closely buttoned, tight buckskin inexpressibles,
long-lashed hunting-whip, and top-boots; the drover on his plump hack,
pacing slowly after his fat beeves; the gentleman farmer, trundling
along in his gig, or trotting smartly on a bit of half-blood. Here go
a family group, the children with new hats and ruffles, grandfather a
little behind, with the hand of an own pet boy or a girl in his;
observe the joy of their faces; what complacent happiness on the ruddy