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'Friend, said Gilfillan, with a more complacent voice than he had hitherto used, 'honour not me. I do not go out to park-dikes and to steadings and to market-towns to have herds and cottars and burghers pull off their bonnets to me as they do to Major Melville o' Cairnvreckan, and ca' me laird or captain or honour.
Bristol, the second town in size, possessed not more than some thirty thousand souls, while York, Norwich, and Exeter, which came next, had considerably fewer people than that. The bulk of the people lived in the country, either in the villages, or in the petty market-towns which were not much superior. The country squire class was the most important in the community.
But in the great market-towns there is now almost always a large room, or hall, set aside for this special purpose. The market begins and concludes at a fixed time, indicated by the ringing of a bell. In this hall the dealers have stands, furnished with desks, at which they may always be found, and here sacks of samples are pitched.
"Is it your duty, think you, or that of any Christian young man, to bear arms in their cause who have poured out the blood of God's saints in the wilderness as if it had been water? or is it a lawful recreation to waste time in shooting at a bunch of feathers, and close your evening with winebibbing in public-houses and market-towns, when He that is mighty is come into the land with his fan in his hand, to purge the wheat from the chaff?"
'Friend, said Gilfillan, with a more complacent voice than he had hitherto used, 'honour not me. I do not go out to park-dikes and to steadings and to market-towns to have herds and cottars and burghers pull off their bonnets to me as they do to Major Melville o' Cairnvreckan, and ca' me laird or captain or honour.
As they are nineteen in number, resolute and well armed, the authorities of the market-towns through which they pass make no opposition by force; it would be offering battle, and that surpasses a functionary's zeal; moreover, the population is either indifferent toward them or sympathetic.
In an isolated people these first germs might easily have been crushed; but in the market-towns of Holland and Brabant, the resort of so many different nations, their first growth would escape the notice of government, and be accelerated under the veil of obscurity.
He hears new modes of expression. His mind enlarged by contemplating the wide diversities of laws, of morals, of manners. But men may travel far, and return with minds as contracted as if they had never retired from their own market-towns. In the same manner, men may know the dates of many battles, and the genealogies of many noble houses, and yet be no wiser.
From hence the great Western Road goes on to Whitchurch and Andover, two market-towns, and sending members to Parliament; at the last of which the Downs, or open country, begins, which we in general, though falsely, call Salisbury Plain. But my resolution being to take in my view what I had passed by before, I was obliged to go off to the left hand, to Alresford and Winchester.
The Chambers of Agriculture are generally so arranged as to meet on market-days, about an hour after the ordinary finishes, and not unfrequently in the same room. The market-towns derive great benefit from this habit of congregating on the market-day. It is the day, too, for paying visits by the ladies.
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