the sight of droves of cattle from the country
and the market once more resounded with
bellowing oxen and bleating sheep. Food before this
had been at famine prices, as the canals had all
been closed, and the peat and potato boats
prevented from entering Dublin. The alarm and
distress were universal, and a rapid thaw was
dreaded like the approach of death.

In England the deaths grew more numerous
A paper of January 21 mentions a grazier
of Coltsworth, being found frozen to deat
between Langford and Upham. He had
been thrown from his horse on his way to
Marlow, and died of cold before he could
recover his fall. The poor fellow had a purse
with sixty pounds in his pocket.

The thermometer on the 9th of January stood
at seven degrees Fahrenheit, and at Petersham
only two degrees. This was the severest cold
known in England since 1798, when a glass
at Sir George Schuckbury's, in Park- street
was two degrees below zero; at Clapham seven
degrees below zero; and at Maidstone eleven
or twelve degrees below zero—the lowest ever
recorded in this country. At this time people
drew all their water from the main-pipes, which,
running over, turned the streets into sheets
of ice. Parties of men with barrows and shovels
patrolled the streets to clear the snow from the
roofs, which had become universally leaky.
On the 21st, a gentleman drove a pair of bays
in a sledge curricle through the City. This
was the bright side of the snow; the dark side
was shown in the countless labourers thrown
out of work, and the extravagant price of coals,
meat, and bread. The newspapers, always
generously ready to help charity, suggested
parochial meetings to collect funds for the poor.
The parishes of St. Giles, Cripplegate, had before
this nobly given away one thousand bushels of
coal.

On the 22nd the London people began to
get more anxious about the mails. At this
crisis the delays became most unprecedented
and alarming. The Edinburgh and Glasgow
letters, brought from Barnet in a post-chaise,
were six hours passing over eleven miles of road,
the guards and attendants having repeatedly to
get out and drag the horses out of the drifts.
The snow everywhere three feet deep was
at Finchley, at the side of the road, twenty
feet deep. The Aylesbury mails had to be
brought on, alternately by carriages, on
horseback, and on men's shoulders. The
Leeds coach was abandoned on the road, and
the mails dragged forty miles across country
before any vehicle could be procured. On one
day, thirty-three mails, with four hundred letter-
bags, failed to arrive at St. Martin's-le-Grand,
though the guards had fought with the snow like
heroes. The Kent and Essex roads were the
only ones passable beyond a few miles from
London. The western coaches came to a stop
in various places. The Windsor coach was
lugged through sixteen feet of snow at Coin-
brook by fifty labourers, and then, panic-
stricken, stuck fast. In Maidenhead-lane, the
snow had doubled its first depth, and
between Twyford and Reading it had drifted into
mountains. As to Bagshot-heath, the coach-
men refused to attempt its Alpine terrors.
Nothing moved on the north road after the
Newcastle coach got off the track and fell into a pit
eight feet deep without, however, hurting
anybody.

Trembling boots and shuddering ostlers
reported that the Exeter and Cheshire mails were
lost, every one frozen to death; and there was
a flying legend that the Portsmouth Highflyer
had jolted down the Devil's Punchbowl. The
middle north road was choked near Highgate-
hill. At Ivy Bridge, in Devonshire, the snow
was fourteen feet deep, and all through the
country men were cutting paths and roads.

It was now seriously proposed, as there was
no place in London to which the street snow
could be carted, to have stoves and boilers in
every street in which to melt it. On the 25th of
January, the local government in Brighton was
loudly praised for its zeal in removing snow
and spreading fine gravel on the footpaths; all
persons not clearing the pavement before their
houses were rigidly fined. Only three of the
eight coaches leaving London at nine at night
and reaching Brighton at six in the morning
arrived in Brighton on the Thursday
of this week: the rest were all blockaded at
Reigate.

While Lord Ranelagh was astonishing London
by dexterous driving in a Lapland sledge,
Liverpool was bewailing cold fifteen and even
seventeen degrees below freezing point. The
markets were not supplied, and the navigation of
the Mersey had become difficult and hazardous.
At Stamford, the snow was so deep that on the
21st three up coaches the Highflyer, the Paul
Jones, and the Mirror had to be dug out of
the snow. The Glasgow mail was stopped at
Saldock, and the Edinburgh at Royston Hills.
The roads to Oakham and Uppingham were
impassable. At the same date all communication
was cut off between Canterbury, the southern
coast, and London. The " heavy coaches" from
town were stopped at Rochester: Chatham-
hill being blocked. The Ayr coach stuck in a
wraith near Kilmarnock, and was left there
stranded. The rider with the bags from Ayr
to Girvan, having had to get his horse dug out
of the morass of snow, went, on on foot. At
Plymouth, twenty inches of snow fell in six
hours. The western road was impassable even
to horsemen. At Exeter, for one day, the shops
were all shut, the very windows being filled up
with snow.

All over England the roads were effaced and
ardly any landmarks left. Everywhere upon
the plain of snow lay moored waggons, carts,
nd coaches deserted by their masters until
the thaw came. On the borders of Warwickshire
and Northamptonshire, the snow was of
vast depth. At Dunchurch, the drifts rose
to a height of twenty-four feet. The
majestic current of the river Trent was frozen
for the first time for twenty years, the ice lying