OF SELBORNE 245 



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 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 Marlborough, 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 track to London : but the relentless 

 heaps of snow were too bulky to be removed ; and so the 

 1 8 th passed over, leaving the company in very uncomfort- 

 able circumstances 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 2 2d the author had occasion to go to London 

 through a sort of Laplandian-scene, very wild and gro- 

 tesque 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 



