292 AUTUMN AND WINTER 



comparatively rare in England. Not once in a generation is 

 it deep save where it is drifted, and a man may keep a 

 sledge for five years without the chance of using it for a day. 

 In such warm spots as the Isle of Wight, it is a notable 

 marvel if snow lies at all. 



But no weather phenomenon so impresses the mind as 

 frost and snow. Their influence is such that people in the 

 South have as constant a belief that December is a cold and 

 snowy month as those who live in sight of the northern hills 

 which may be capped with snow from October onwards. 

 How vivid the sight is when falls 



' The new soft fallen mask 

 Of snow upon the mountains and the moors,' 



and how vividly snow pictures are left in literature. Jan 

 Ridd finding the sheep in the snowdrift is the best picture 

 in words ever painted by Blackmore, the novelist of south- 

 west England, where snow is rarest. 



Did the Laureate in his warm and quiet Berkshire home 

 ever write a better description than in his poem of London 

 snow, though it was written chiefly as a metrical experiment ? 



' When men were all asleep the snow came flying, 

 In large white flakes falling on the city brown, 

 Stealthily and perpetually settling and loosely lying, 

 Hushing the latest traffic of the drowsy town ; 

 Deadening, muffling, stifling its murmurs failing ; 

 Lazily and incessantly floating down and down ; 

 Silently sifting and veiling road, roof, and railing ; 

 Hiding difference, making unevenness even, 

 Into angles and crevices softly drifting and sailing. 

 All night it fell, and when full inches seven 

 It lay in the depth of its uncompacted lightness, 

 Its clouds blew off from a high and frosty heaven ; 

 And all woke earlier for the unaccustomed brightness 

 Of the winter dawning, the strange unheavenly glare ; 

 The eye marvelled marvelled at the dazzling whiteness, 

 The ear hearkened to the stillness of the solemn air.' 



