The distress caused by decaying trade has been exasperated by
the weather, which, throughout Europe, has been unusually severe. From Hamburg to Moscow the whole plain of Central and Eastern Europe was, in the early part of the week, one sea of snow. The snowfall in Switzerland was so severe that it arrested all traffic, as it did also in the north of Scotland, where, on Wednesday, eighteen trains were snowed up at one time, and where communication was kept open with Aberdeen by steamers. Peterhead, it is said, went out of sight for a week, and through- out the country ordinary traffic almost ceased. In London, though the snowfall was not heavy, the register marked unusual cold, the thermometer having fallen on Tuesday night at Green- wich Observatory to 15° of frost. The Thames was nearly frozen over at Windsor, and the ice in the Parks bore thousands of skaters, who escaped with fewer than the usual immersions. It is noteworthy that the last year of great commercial distress-1866, when Overend Gurneys fell, and it seemed on Friday, the 11th of May, that we should be reduced to a state of barter—was also marked in the following winter by the unusual severity of the cold, which, however, in these days rarely passes an endurable limit. Deep salt-water has not, we believe, been frozen in England in this century.
