At a time when martial hardihood was the only accomplishment likely to confer distinction, when war was thought to be the most honourable pursuit, and agriculture deemed the only necessary employment, there was little social intercourse, and so few retail dealers, that men had no very easy means of procuring those articles which they occasionally wanted. To remove this inconvenience, it was found necessary to establish some general mart, where they might be supplied. Fairs were therefore instituted, as a proper medium between the buyer and seller, and were at first considered as merely places of trade.[99] They were generally held on saints' days. Some of them continued open many weeks, and had peculiar privileges to encourage the attendance of those who had goods upon sale. The pedlar travelled from city to city, or from town to town, with his moveable warehouse, and furnished his customers with what served them until his periodical return. As men grew more polished their wants increased, their intercourse became more general, and the importance of commerce was better understood. The merchant deposited his goods in a warehouse, and the trader opened a shop. Fairs, deserted by men of business, gradually changed their nature, and, instead of being crowded by the active and the industrious, were the haunts of the idle and the dissolute.[100] Such were they at the time of this delineation, which was made about the year 1733, and may be considered as a true picture of the holiday amusements of that period. At the head of these we must place what were than called stage-plays,--a most favourite diversion of your Englishman ever since the time "When sweetest Shakspeare, Fancy's child, Warbled his native woodnotes wild." In these humble representations some of our greatest actors made their first appearance; and not a few of them, even after they had attained high eminence, ranted, strutted, and bellowed through all the days the fairs were kept open, to their own emolument, and the heartfelt pleasure of the Wapping beaux and the black-eyed beauties of Saltpetre Bank. The play now enacting appears to be the _Fall of Bajazet_,[101]--and it is performed to the life; for the unsure scaffolding, not being built to bear the terror-working stamps of the furious Turk, tumbles to the ground. The tyrant's turban is shaken from his head, the truncheon is dropped from his hand, and with the moralizing Tamerlane he joins the general crash, and threatens destruction to the china jars and bowls which are beneath. Not only the heroes and heroine of the drama, but both band and musical instruments are involved in the ruin. The band, it is true, consists of--a solitary fiddler; and the instruments are--a violin and a salt-box. The monkey and the merry-andrew seem the only two animals likely to evade injury in this universal wreck. Corporeal dexterity at such a time is more useful than mental acquirements.