the doctor's bright door-plate is dimmed
as if Old Winter's breath were on it, and the
lawyer's office window is appropriately misty,
to the market-place: where we find a cheerful
bustle and plenty of people—  for the most
part pretending not to like the snow, but
liking it very much, as people generally do.
The Swan is a bird of a good substantial brood,
worthy to be a country cousin of the hospitable
Hen and Chickens, whose company we have
deserted for only a few hours and with whom
we shall roost again at Birmingham to-night.
The Swan has bountiful coal-country notions
of firing, snug homely rooms, cheerful windows
looking down upon the clusters of snowy
umbrellas in the market-place, and on the
chaffering and chattering which is pleasantly
hushed by the thick white down lying so
deep, and softly falling still. Neat bright-eyed
waitresses do the honours of the Swan.
The Swan is confident about its soup, is
troubled with no distrust concerning codfish,
speaks the word of promise in relation
to an enormous chine of roast beef, one of
the dishes at "the Ironmasters' dinner,"
which will be disengaged at four. The
Ironmasters' dinner! It has an imposing sound.
We think of the Ironmasters joking, drinking
to their Iron mistresses, clinking their glasses
with a metallic ring, and comporting themselves
at the festive board with the might of men
who have mastered iron.

Now for a walk! Not in the direction of
the furnaces, which we will see to-night when
darkness shall set off the fires; but in the
country, with our faces towards Wales. Say,
ye hoary finger-posts whereon the name of
picturesque old Shrewsbury is written in cha-
racters of frost; ye hedges lately bare, that have
burst into snowy foliage; ye glittering trees,
from which the wind blows sparkling dust;
ye high drifts by the roadside, which are blue
a-top, where ye are seen opposed to the bright
red and yellow of the horizon; say all of ye,
is summer the only season for enjoyable
walks!  Answer, roguish crow, alighting on
a sheep's back to pluck his wool off for an
extra blanket, and skimming away, so black,
over the white field; give us your opinion,
swinging ale-house signs, and cosey little
bars; speak out, farrier's shed with faces all
a-glow, fountain of sparks, heaving bellows,
and ringing music; tell us, cottage hearths
and sprigs of holly in cottage windows; be
eloquent in praise of wintry walks, you
sudden blasts of wind that pass like shiverings
of Nature, you deep roads, you solid
fragments of old hayricks with your fragrance
frozen in! Even you, drivers of toiling carts,
coal-laden, keeping company together behind
your charges, dog-attended and basket-bearing:
even you, though it is no easy work to
stop, every now and then, and chip the snow
away from the clogged wheels with picks,
will have a fair word to say for winter, will
you not!

Down to the solitary factory in the dip of
the road, deserted of holiday-makers, and
where the water-mill is frozen up—then
turn. As we draw nigh to our bright bird
again, the early evening is closing in, the
cold increases, the snow deadens and darkens,
and lights spring up in the shops. A wet
walk, ankle deep in snow the whole way.
We must buy some stockings, and borrow the
Swan's slippers before dinner.

It is a mercy that we step into the
toyshop to buy a pocket-comb too, or the pretty
child-customer (as it seems to us, the only
other customer the elderly lady of the
toyshop has lately had), might have stood divided
between the two puzzles at one shilling each,
until the putting up of the shutters. But, the
incursion of our fiery faces and snowy dresses,
coupled with our own individual
recommendation of the puzzle on the right hand,
happily turn the scale. The best of pocket-combs
for a shilling, and now for the stockings.
Dibbs "don't keep 'em," though he writes up
that he does, and Jibbs is so beleaguered by
country people making market-day and
Christmas-week purchases, that his shop is
choked to the pavement. Mibbs is the man
for our money, and Mibbs keeps everything
in the stocking line, though he may not
exactly know where to find it. However, he finds
what we want, in an inaccessible place, after
going up ladders for it like a lamplighter;
and a very good article it is, and a very civil
worthy trader Mibbs is, and may Mibbs
increase and multiply! Likewise young Mibbs,
unacquainted with the price of anything in
stock, and young Mibbs's aunt who attends
to the ladies' department.

The Swan is rich in slippers—in those good
old flip-flap inn slippers which nobody can
keep on, which knock double knocks on
every stair as their wearer comes down stains,
and fly away over the banisters before they
have brought him to level ground. Rich also
is the Swan in wholesome well-cooked dinner,
and in tender chine of beef, so brave in size
that the mining of all the powerful
Ironmasters is but a sufficient outlet for its gravy.
Rich in things wholesome and sound and
unpretending is the Swan, except that we
would recommend the good bird not to dip its
beak into its sherry. Under the change
from snow and wind to hot soup, drawn red
curtains, fire and candle, we observe our
demonstrations at first to be very like the
engine's at the little station; but they
subside, and we dine vigorously—another tribute
to a winter walk!—and finding that the
Swan's ideas of something hot to drink are
just and laudable, we adopt the same, with
emendations (in the matter of lemon chiefly)
of which modesty and total abstinence
principles forbid the record. Then, thinking
drowsily and delightfully of all things that
have occurred to us during the last four-and-twenty
hours, and of most things that have
occurred to us during the last four-and-twenty
years, we sit in arm chairs, amiably