WINTER OF 1776. 271 



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 fourteenth, the snow continued to increase, and 

 began to stop the road-wagons and coaches, which could no 

 longer keep on their regular stages ; and especially 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 Maryborough, after strange embarrassments, here met 

 with a ne plus ultra. The ladies fretted, and offered large 

 rewards to labourers, if they would shovel them a road 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 circumstances, 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 twenty- 

 nine, twenty-eight, twenty-five, and thereabout ; but on the 

 twenty-first it descended to twenty. 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 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 of the streets 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 convey 

 an uncomfortable idea of desolation : 



Ipsa silentia terrent. 



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

 evening, the frost became very intense. At South Lambeth, 



