OF SELBORNE. 321 
January 7th.—Snow driving all the day, which 
was followed by frost, sleet, and some snow till the 
12th, when a prodigious mass overwhelmed all the 
works of men, drifting over the tops of the gates 
and filling the hollow lanes. 
On the 14th the writer was obliged to be much 
abroad, and thinks he never before or since has 
encountered such rugged Siberian weather. Many 
of the narrow roads were now filled above the tops 
of the hedges, through which the snow was driven 
into most romantic and grotesque shapes, so stri- 
king to the imagination as not to be seen without 
wonder and pleasure. The poultry dared not 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 wagons and coaches, 
which could no longer keep on their regular stagesy 
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 re- 
wards to labourers if they would shovel them a 
track to London; but the relentless heaps of snow 
