OF SELBORNE. 139 



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 wag- 

 gons and coaches, which could no longer 

 keep on their regular stages ; and especially 

 on the western roads, where the fall ap- 

 pears to have been deeper than in the 

 south. The company at Bath, that wanted 

 to attend the Queens birth-day, were strange- 

 ly incommoded : many carriages of persons, 

 who got in their way to town from Bath 

 as far as Marlborough, after strange em- 

 barrassments, here met with a m 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 were too bulky to be re- 

 moved; and so the 18th passed over, leav- 

 ing the company in very uncomfortable cir- 

 cumstances at the Castle and other inns. 



On the 20th the sun shone out for the 

 first time since the frost began ; a circum- 

 stance that has been remarked before much 



