JANUARY. 27 



snow along, whirling it from the open fields, and 

 driving it against whatever opposes its course. 

 People who are obliged to be passing to and fro 

 muffle up their faces, and bow their heads to the 

 blast. There is no loitering, no street-gossiping, 

 no stopping to make recognition of each other ; 

 they shuffle along, the most winterly objects of the 

 scene, bearing on their fronts the tokens of the 

 storm. Against every house, rock, or bank, the 

 snow-drift accumulates. It curls over the tops of 

 walls and hedges in fantastic wildness, forming 

 often the most perfect curves, resembling the scrolls 

 of Ionic capitals, and showing beneath romantic 

 caves and canopies. Hollow lanes, pits, and bogs 

 now become traps for unwary travellers ; the snow 

 filling them up, and levelling all to one deceitful 

 plain. It is a dismal time for the traversers of 

 wide and open heaths ; and one of toil and danger 

 to the shepherd in mountainous tracts. There the 

 snows fall in amazing quantities in the course of a 

 few hours, and, driven by the powerful winds of 

 those lofty regions, soon fill up the dells and glens 

 to a vast depth, burying the flocks and houses too, 

 in a brief space. In some winters the sheep of 

 extensive ranges of country, much cattle, and 

 many of the inhabitants, have perished beneath 

 the snow-drifts. At the moment in which I am 

 writing, accounts from Scotland appear in the 

 newspapers of a most tremendous snow-storm, 

 which, leaving the country southward of Alnwick 

 and Gretna-Green nearly free, has buried all north- 



