e imagination as not to be seen without wonder and
pleasure. The poultry dared not to stir out of their roosting places;
for cocks and hens are so dazzled and confounded by the glare of snow
that they would soon perish without assistance. The hares also lay
sullenly in their seats, and would not move till compelled by hunger,
being conscious--poor animals--that the drifts and heaps treacherously
betray their footsteps, and prove fatal to numbers of them.

From the 14th the snow continued to increase, and began to stop the road
waggons, and coaches, which could no longer keep on their regular stages;
and especially on the western roads, where the fall appears to have been
deeper than in the south. The company at Bath, that wanted to attend the
Queen's birthday, were strangely incommoded: many carriages of persons
who got in their way to town from Bath as far as Marlborough, after
strange embarrassments, here met with a _ne plus ultra_. The ladies
fretted, and offered large rewards to labourers if they would shovel them
a track to London; but the relentless heaps of snow were too bulky to be
removed; and so the 18th passed over, leaving the company in very
uncomfortable circumstances at the Castle and other inns.

On the 20th the sun shone out for the first time since the frost began; a
circumstance that has been remarked before much in favour of vegetation.
All this time the cold was not very intense, for the thermometer stood at
29 degrees, 28 degrees, 25 degrees, and thereabout; but on the 21st it
descended to 20 degrees. The birds now began to be in a very pitiable
and starving condition. Tamed by the season, sky-larks settled in the
streets of towns, because they saw the ground was bare; rooks frequented
dunghills close to houses; and crows watched horses as they passed, and
greedily devoured what dropped from them. Hares now came into men's
gardens, and, scraping away the snow, devoured such plants as they could
find.

On the 22nd the author had occasion to go to London through a sort of
Laplandian scene, very wild and grotesque indeed. But the metropolis
itself exhibited a still more singular appearance than the country; for,
being bedded deep in snow, the pavement of the streets could not be
touched by the wheels or the horse's feet, so that the carriages ran
about without the least noise. Such an exemption from din and clatter
was strange, but not pleasant; it seemed to convey an uncomfortable idea
of