THE FEBRUARY WINTER.

BY DUDLEY COSTELLO.

THAT ridiculous myth, "the oldest inhabitant," has been very much pressed into the service of late, to tell us as usual-what he does not remember. He is the most positive non-conductor of information that ever was known, and but for its being absolutely impossible to discover his "whereabout," one might fancy that his locus standi was, as an Irish member might say, on one of the seats of the Treasury bench of the House of Commons.

This individual has recently been heard to declare, by somebody not much more discoverable than himself, that he has no recollection of having ever experienced such severe weather as that with which we have just been visited. To "a certain extent"-(a sort of parliamentary phrase, which means a great deal or nothing at all)-the old muff-(he will, I trust, pardon me for using such an expression, muffs being at a premium at this time of the year)-to a certain extent, then, the old muff is right: the weather has been uncommonly severe, and perhaps it is not on record that winter, after playing at fast and loose with us throughout the legitimate season, should suddenly fix upon February for the performance of his most fantastic tricks, which, if they do not make the angels weep, produce something very like that effect upon mortal householders with empty coal-cellars. At all events, such a sharp frost, with so much snow and ice, is a novelty to which we have not for many years been accustomed. It is almost as strange a visitant as War, but let us hope that we may be able to give a better account of it than thosewhoever they may happen to be-(a point on which no two persons are agreed)-who are responsible for the mismanagement of our military operations.

War and Winter are apt to hunt in couples, at all events in the ideas of him who, not claiming to be "the oldest inhabitant," can awake the souvenirs of some forty years. In the beginning of 1814 I knew, vaguely enough, being a very juvenile school-boy, that war was going on somewhere; but there was no vagueness in my knowledge of the existence of winter. That was a tangible fact of every hour's experience. The daily walk from Richmond-green to Kew, beside the long wall which then was decorated with chalk drawings of all the ships in the British navy, and a representation of more than all the chain and bar-shot and piles of cannonballs than, to my apprehension, ever could have been fired off, let the war last till "the crack of doom :" that long wall above which the trees hung a canopy of rime, depending from the branches in every variety of beautiful form! The return from Kew to Richmond, not by the road but the river, no longer a "silent highway," but a firm and compact mass of ice on which shouting thousands were in motion, skating, sliding, playing at football and hocky-on which fairs were being held and oxen roasted whole, and on which a printing-press was actually established! It was, indeed, a winter that made itself felt then and remembered afterwards.

In later years there came other fits and snatches of winter, such as I

can recal when, in 1837, I crossed the Elbe at Lauenburg on a raft, which was with difficulty propelled through the immense blocks of ice that came drifting down from the Saxon Switzerland; and when, after reaching Hamburg, fearful of not catching the steamer for London, I found her so firmly embedded in ice that my only chance of seeing home that Christmas presented itself in the miserable alternative of a wretched journey in a Schnell-post across the dreary heaths that lie between Harburg and Bremen, and so on through a less desolate country to the Rhine. Such as when in Paris, in 1829, that unknown event (to "the oldest inhabitant") occurred of the Seine being "deux fois prise"-that is to say, frozen over twice, with an interval of thaw between, which suffered its waters to flow freely, only to be hardened, as it seemed, to still greater density. Such, also, as when in Brussels, in 1844, the Allée Verte used to be crowded with spectators to see the Flemish peasants, male and female, come skating to market in long files with the balanced motion of a pendulum, or the undulating advance of the great sea-serpent ; when, in the same season, the great fountain in the centre of Liége resembled an eruption of lava suddenly converted into ice, and figures as weird as the Kobolds of the northern mythology, as shadowy as the White Lady of the neighbouring forest of the Ardennes, seemed to be the frozen guardians of the fount.

But these recollections of winter-in Europe at least had reference only to periods of brief duration, and except that we were put in mind ́ one night in January twelvemonth that snow could fall in London-(who has forgotten the impossibility of getting a cab that night, or how, not despairingly, we returned to the fireside and told ghost-stories and drank cherry-brandy "till all was blue"-that is to say, till daylight came?)— we had almost arrived at the conclusion that a hard winter was a mere bugbear, an Old Bogy to frighten children with, a nonentity that was either snuffed out or had emigrated. Year after year came round, and still, as the days dwindled to their shortest span, the "Green Yule," as they say in the North, betokened the "fat kirk-yard," and green peas and strawberries were not held to be such utter impossibilities. This delusion was repeated this winter: December went by, foggy but not frosty; January came, and for the first fortnight we lapped ourselves in a sort of Stygian-Elysium, swallowing our usual quantum of easterly wind and coughing it back again, not much the better for the visitation; but it was destined that the latter half of that month should be worse than the beginning, and with the snow came harder weather than we had yet experienced, which promised to last. That promise was not fulfilled to the letter: as the month ended, a rapid thaw came on-with all those direful accompaniments that make pedestrians wish to be water-fowl-to perform their wading in a natural, if not a graceful manner. The thaw, however, lasted only long enough to be disagreeable, and before the first snow had melted another fall took place, the wind settled into an inflexible north-easter, and without admitting of any room for doubt, the February Winter began.

The Omnibus proprietors were, as usual, the first to indicate the change. The third horse, the Unicorn of their team, like the pilot of a string of wild-geese, outwardly and visibly declared the arrival of hard

weather, which the extra sixpence or shilling, laid on in the most autocratical style, utterly regardless of distance, painfully impressed on the minds of economical travellers. The cabmen followed suit, as far as lay in their power-that is to say, they bullied the weak and appealed to the compassion of the strong. But the demand for vehicular conveyance soon relaxed. People found that the more they trusted to the locomotive powers of horses, the longer their journeys lasted, the colder they themselves became, and pedestrianism revived. Every stout gentleman of one's acquaintance realised, in his own idea, the performances of Captain Barclay. It became dangerous to turn a corner too suddenly, lest you should find yourself unexpectedly rebounding from the well-buttoned-up and portly convexity of some opposing form advancing at the rate of at least six miles an hour, with all the explosiveness of a bursting boiler. Those who encountered friends in the streets had only time to nod to each other as they went past: their eyelids were too stiff to wink, their lips too hermetically glued together to speak.

Down came the snow, heavier than before, and the pace moderated, except with the very light-weights. Nothing under nine stone could get over the ground unsupported, with any chance of safety. Where the snow was suffered to stay it froze, where it was swept away the iron plates above the coal-cellars were so many points in the sliding scale. Panting and unsuspecting pedestrians were brought up so suddenly, that if they did not measure their lengths on the pavement they were sure to bite their tongues half through; and Mr. M'Cann, the excellent and indefatigable surgeon of Parliament-street, has, I am told, published in a tabular form all the accidents from frost that have been brought to him, and nine-tenths of them, I hear, have been bitten tongues.

Meantime, the waters in and around London rapidly congealed, and the boys"-that desperate race-suddenly abandoned their brooms and left off ringing at bells with the cry of "Want your door swept ?" and made their habitat the shores of the Serpentine, ready for the first rush, which generally ends in immersion. Old and young now flocked forth to the Parks, the only question, the only thought being "whether the ice would bear!"

"General February"-as Prince Menschikoff has dubbed him-very soon answered that question. By the end of the first week of his career there was no apparent difference of solidity between land and water. The thermometer became lower every morning, the ice thickened every hour, and the hurry-scurry amusements of winter fairly set in. Its first-fruits, until everybody had established his equilibrium, were apparent in bruises, contusions, black eyes, cut faces, and other consequences of volatility and collision. The Chinese ceremony of Ko-tou was practised, involuntarily, on all the ornamental waters of the metropolis, though in no ornamental manner, while the utility of tumbling was illustrated by the increased demand for diachylon. The skate-makers-who, if they see a single flake of snow fall, immediately pile the shop-windows with their implements-began ments began to reap a plentiful harvest. Those who were passésmaîtres in the skater's art, took possession of the choicest spots on the 'ice to cut spread eagles, pirouette, and charm the eyes of the fair who gazed on their "manly forms"-the skaters of course being wholly un

conscious of the interest they excited. Then there were the racing, goahead class-long-legged guardsmen, short-legged navvies (giving it out that they were Dutchmen), who did-or said they did their mile a minute. Woe unto such as crossed their path-woe sometimes to themselves, for under the arches of the Serpentine-bridge were ranges of chevaux-de-frises, ingeniously placed like the abbatis in front of Sebastopol; a pleasant and humane contrivance invented by the park-keepers, which only resulted, however, in the spiking of one Member of Parliament. Besides these there were the experimentalists, they who for the first time endued the steel shoe, and afforded-to the benevolent-minded-more entertainment than all the rest put together. How graceful those outspread limbs! How charming that combination of angles! wonderful that tour-de-force! How stunning that prostration! How excessively unkind to laugh at it!

How

But "vogue la galère!" Every one who ventures on the ice must take his chance of a tumble. Yet there are other things to enjoy besides the misfortunes of our fellow-creatures. Look at that Esquimaux dog (it is only a black Newfoundland, promoted for the occasion) careering along, with a huge fellow in a basket, attached by long traces! He leaves everything behind him, even his driver, for a frozen hummock of snow upsets the carriage and discharges the living cargo sprawling on the ice, himself uncatchable for the next half hour, so delighted is he with the unwonted exercise. But here comes something more genuine! It is Captain Wheatley of the Guards, in his well-appointed sleigh, driving a beautiful bright bay, fleet as a reindeer, and as slenderly formed, that speeds to the music of countless bells, and leaves the swiftest skaters far behind. Captain Wheatley has it all to himself for the first few days; then other sleighs appear, and finally Royalty deigns to show itself on runners. Ah, those sleighs! Talk of the pleasure of conducting an express train! it is nothing to the delight of driving tandem in a sleigh, nor does it appear half so rapid. Enveloped in a bearskin, with a furry companion by your side (who turns out when the journey is over to be an excessively pretty girl), the light carriage glides over the crisp snow, the frost crackles in the air, the sleigh-bells jingle, the road is devoured, the glistening trees by the roadside seem "fleeting to a backward sky:" you have all the whirl and excitement of Leonora's midnight ride without its fatal dénouement; unless, indeed, that furry companion should be the fate that makes or mars your existence. Those sleighs, indeed! I could tell more than one curious story of what has happened with them, if I had room; but Time itself has a pair of skates on at this moment the month is the shortest in the year, and I am throwing these hurried recollections together while an inexorable printer-who won't give me time to describe how thousands skated on the Serpentine by torchlight-is clamouring for the promised copy. Let me then be brief.

What is the general appearance of the Thames at this moment? I stand on London Bridge, and looking eastward behold a group of real Dutchmen, who for the nonce have substituted "the Pool" for their wellbeloved canals, and are skimming over its frozen surface with ponderous lightness; nearer still the same scene is exhibited at Pickle-herring Stairs, by individuals who, in all probability, have a good right to be

VOL. XXXVII.

Y

known by one part of that designation. But this is not the prevailing feature of the Thames, which wears a sullen, threatening aspect, with its frozen-in steamers and its huge blocks of ice that sail slowly along the narrow, blackened tracks with which the river is streaked, or, drifted ashore by the current, lie piled like Arctic bergs. Were my vision telescopic, like some of the wonderful "waistcoat-pocket glasses" advertised by Mr. Solomon, and could I follow the sinuosities of the stream, I should see the Thames all ice from Hammersmith to Hampton, and they who earn their bread between its banks or on them, watermen or gardeners, all frozen out alike. But why, in the egotistical phrase of a Londoner, whose mental vision is shut up within the limits of the bills of mortality,-why confine myself to a radius of a dozen miles when the same visitation of frost and snow prevails throughout the kingdom? In some parts of the country locomotion has left the highways and betaken itself to the canals and rivers. What do they send us word from Lincolnshire? On the Witham, between Boston and that farfamed city over which Somebody is ever looking with longing eyes-8 distance of five-and-thirty miles-the "voyage," as they term it, is regularly performed on foot. At Crowland they have announced a sweepstakes on skates, which is "open to all England," a safe offer, when the inhabitants of the next village vainly endeavour to plough their way through the snow-drifts to reach it. On the Trent, near Beeston, people warm themselves beside huge fires which blaze on the ice in the middle of the stream. In Devonshire, the skittle-players leave their games to dress their dinners at the gas-stoves on the Exe. At Southampton, the dinners themselves are February's winter-gift, for there the mullet, with powerless fins, come floundering ashore, and make, as it were, but one leap from their native brine to the fish-kettle. On the north-eastern coast, the sea-gulls seeking refuge in towns far inland, hope to be mistaken for pigeons; and at the Land's-end every description of wild-fowl that never met before is now assembled in one vast marketable congregation. On the wolds of Yorkshire and the mountains of Wales the mutton (unroasted) lies buried beneath the snow, and—I grieve to add the shepherds are often lost in endeavouring to reclaim it. Winter, in short, is paramount everywhere.* His most singular freak appears, to my thinking, in the following fact:

The thermometer, carefully registered, marked its lowest on Valentine's Day!

This is recorded in the veracious type of the Times newspaper of the 19th ult., as having occurred-of all places in the world-at the village of "famed" Dunmow!

Let me hope, as affairs of the heart are always governed by contraries, that a favourable omen may be inferred from this phenomenon, and that, though Valentine's Day was the coldest in the year, it only made those draw closer together who are qualifying for Mr. Ainsworth's forthcoming Flitch of Bacon.

Of course, the Thaw set in while this article was passing through the press. The Clerk of the Weather always will interfere. He might just as well have waited a week longer.-D. C.