Smaller fairs were held in most districts for similar purposes of exchange. At these the staples of the locality were sold and servants usually hired. Many were for special purposes--cattle fairs, leather fairs, cloth fairs, bonnet fairs, fruit fairs. Scatcherd says that less than a century ago a large fair was held between Huddersfield and Leeds, in a field still called Fairstead, near Birstal, which used to be a great mart for fruit, onions, and such like; and that the clothiers resorted thither from all the country round to purchase the articles, which were stowed away in barns, and sold at booths by lamplight in the morning.*[6] Even Dartmoor had its fair, on the site of an ancient British village or temple near Merivale Bridge, testifying to its great antiquity; for it is surprising how an ancient fair lingers about the place on which it has been accustomed to be held, long after the necessity for it has ceased. The site of this old fair at Merivale Bridge is the more curious, as in its immediate neighbourhood, on the road between Two Bridges and Tavistock, is found the singular-looking granite rock, bearing so remarkable a resemblance to the Egyptian sphynx, in a mutilated state. It is of similarly colossal proportions, and stands in a district almost as lonely as that in which the Egyptian sphynx looks forth over the sands of the Memphean Desert.*[7] [Image] Site of an ancient British village and fair on Dartmoor. The last occasion on which the fair was held in this secluded spot was in the year 1625, when the plague raged at Tavistock; and there is a part of the ground, situated amidst a line of pillars marking a stone avenue--a characteristic feature of the ancient aboriginal worship--which is to this day pointed out and called by the name of the "Potatoe market." But the glory of the great fairs has long since departed. They declined with the extension of turnpikes, and railroads gave them their death-blow. Shops now exist in every little town and village, drawing their supplies regularly by road and canal from the most distant parts. St. Bartholomew, the great fair of London,*[8] and Donnybrook, the great fair of Dublin, have been suppressed as nuisances; and nearly all that remains of the dead but long potent institution of the Fair, is the occasional exhibition at periodic times in country places, of pig-faced ladies, dwarfs, giants, double-bodied calves, and such-like wonders, amidst a blatant clangour of drums, gongs, and cymbals. Like the sign of the Pack-Horse over the village inn door, the modern village fair, of which the principal article of merchandise is gingerbread-nuts, is but the vestige of a state of things that has long since passed away.