WINTER OF 1776. 293 



heaps treacherously betray their footsteps, and prove fatal to 

 numbers of them. 



Pram the fourteenth, 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 greater 

 than in the south. The company at Bafch, that wanted to 

 attend the Queen's birth-day, were strangely incommoded ; 

 many carriages of persons who got, in their way to town 

 from Bath, as far as Marlborough, after strange embarrass- 

 ments, 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 eighteenth passed 

 over, leaving the company in very uncomfortable circum- 

 stances at the Castle and other inns. 



On the twentieth, 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, 28, 

 25, and thereabout : but on the twenty-first it descended to 

 20. The birds now began to be in a very pitiable and starv- 

 ing 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 twenty-second, 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 could not be touched by 

 the wheels or the horses' 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 con- 

 vey an uncomfortable idea of desolation : 



" Ipsa silentia terrent." 

 On the twenty-seventh, much snow fell all day, and in the 



