OF SELBORNE. 



founded 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 espe- 

 cially 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 birth-day, were 

 strangely incommoded : many carriages of persons who 

 got in their way to town, from Bath, as far as Marlbo- 

 rough, 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 were too 

 bulky to be removed ; and so the 18th passed over, 

 leaving the company in very uncomfortable circum- 

 stances 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, 28, 25, and thereabout ; but on the 21st it descended 

 to 20. 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 



