So stern a winter has not been known for a
period which sta- tistical writers somewhat arbitrarily account two generations. Not since 1809 has the thermometer been BO low as it was on Tuesday last, when it stood ten degrees below the lowest point within the forty-five years—eight degrees below zero. But the in- tensity of the cold has been by no means the most trying incident; the incessant changes both of temperature and of the character of the weather have been far worse. After some weeks of frost, with occasionally the very brief and partial threat of a thaw, rain on Thursday night, and a streaming-down yesterday, threatened a thaw in London; which the cold, however, was still sufficient to hold in suspense. Thus, mankind in the streets is harassed by a junction of the two opposite nuisances, snow-frost and thaw. Abc,nt the country, the inconvenience assumes larger proportions : the trains run on the railways with the greatest difficulty; in some parts transit appears to be quite cut off ; and in the anemia of communication England is thrown back to times for- gotten. There There is one striking exception. Steam the other day tried its giant power, and eight engines united to force a train through the snow ; but the labour was too great—the dead weight of old Winter was too much even for steam power to overcome. But the snow is pierced by the electric telegraph ; and although our bodies, or goods, and even our written and printed communings, may be blockaded and intercepted, "the reason why" flashes from one end of the land to the other ; and if inconvenience is felt, the gravest anxieties are solved. The same instrument has been used to mitigate the inconvenience of intercepted commercial documents and to prevent the noting of bills for unexplained non-payment. But all traders, it seems, had not taken that precaution; and the noting of more than five hundred bills in London, while the stock- brokers and share-brokers were snowballing each other at Liver- pool, illustrates the social anarchy occasioned by a season which overturns all human arrangements. The suffering that must at- tend such a season among the more helpless classes is obvious ; in some instances death has overtaken the feeble or the incautious. But while the suffering is obvious and grave, the benefit is scarcely less apparent, and is infinitely larger : the agriculturist hails a frost which promises to _prepare for him a growing spring and a fertile summer ; and the:murmur at the hardships of the hour is checked by the reflection that a higher wisdom rules the march of the seasons, and through suffering nurtures the being destined for after happiness.
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