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 18th passed over, leaving the company in
very uncomfortable 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, skylarks
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 22nd 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