Within about two miles of Ballydhas stood the market town of the parish.  It also bore the traces of peace and happiness.  Around it lay a rich fertile country, studded with warm homesteads, waving fields, and residences of a higher rank, at once elegant and fashionable.  The gentry were not, it is true, of the highest class; but in lieu of that they were kind, considerate, and what was before all, resident.  If an accidental complaint happened to be preferred by one man against another, they generally were qualified by a knowledge of their characters to administer justice between them, without the risk of being misled by misrepresentation.  This prevented many complaints founded 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 countenance of the healthy old man.  The parents are also happy, but betray the unconscious anxiety of those who love their children, and are sensible of the serious duties inseparable from their condition; the four little ones know not the cares of affection, and, consequently, their looks are full of delight, eagerness, and curiosity.