I hastened away from the breakfast table to the place where the fair was held, and was surprised at the similarity of the scene before me to those which I have so often witnessed at home. It had nothing of the English character, excepting some wooden drinking-booths and caravans for showmen; there were no smart-looking horse-jockeys, no well-dressed grooms, not a white smock-frock, a laced buskin, a well-trimmed bonnet, nor a neatly appointed tax-cart or gig in view; but a crowd of men generally dressed in blue jackets and trousers and glazed hats, among whom were interspersed some wearing the blue blouse, and a cloth cap or red worsted nightcap, and a great number of women in their striped woollens, and high white linen or muslin coifs--nay some of these (on the heads of the rich farmers’ wives) were of lace, and worth scores of pounds sterling. The whole assemblage (combining with it groups of country fellows mounted on hardy ponies, with here and there a woman _en croupe_, or independently on a pad, with bags behind and before her, kicking away at the ribs of their horses with their heavy sabots) reminded me of what we see on a market-day in several parts of Ireland. Then, to render the similitude more striking, there were the clamour and jargon of persons buying and selling; and now and then a half drunken fellow singing in the lightness of his heart, or very noisy in argument; but generally courteous, and _never_ daring to strike a blow, and a pedlar selling beads and almanacks amidst a din of oaths and imprecations, and the embarrassments occasioned by the movements of a team of four bullocks and three little horses in single file, dragging each other along with a huge tonneau of cider for the refreshment of the thirsty crowd, on a two-wheeled waggon, in the rear. We had passed this rude and very dirty vehicle, when the roll of a drum startled me. Thinks I to myself, “war is about to commence in earnest,” but it was only the preliminary flourish of a drummer, who immediately afterwards read out a notice that a celebrated dentist was about to appear in his voiture, for the purpose of relieving sufferers from those ailments which, alas! are incidental to us in every stage of life. Having raised his hat from respect to the majesty of the sovereign people, he moved off to an adjacent street, while the great operator himself appeared at hand in a showy kind of cab drawn by two horses (one in the shafts and the other in the outrigger style), with a tawdrily dressed postilion to guide them. Being in haste to reach the open square where the horse fair was held, I had little time for witnessing the operations of the tooth-drawer, who was flourishing his case of instruments in a most attractive way. When he had trapped his victim, he blew a long loud blast upon a horn to intimate that he was going to operate before the crowd, and after keeping the sufferer in an agony of suspense and nervousness, he pulled out one or