he lines of Thomson:--

"And down he sinks
Beneath the shelter of the shapeless drift,
Thinking o'er all the bitterness of death,
Mix'd with the tender anguish nature shoots
Through the wrung bosom of the dying man.
His wife, his children, and his friends unseen.
On every nerve
The deadly winter seizes; shuts up sense;
And o'er his inmost vitals creeping cold
Lays him along the snows, a stiffened corse,
Stretched out, and bleaching in the northern blast."

We have little conception of the labour that had to be expended, during
periods of snow, in the endeavour to keep the roads open. In places the
snow would be found lying thirty or forty feet deep, and the road
trustees were obliged to spend large sums of money in clearing it away.
Hundreds of the military were called out in certain places to assist,
and snow-ploughs were set to work in order to force a passage.

The inconvenience to the country caused by such interruptions is well
described in the _Annual Register_ of the 15th February 1795: "My letter
of two days ago is still here; for, though I have made an effort twice,
I have been obliged to return, not having reached half the first stage.
Two mails are due from London, three from Glasgow, and four from
Edinburgh. Neither the last guard that went hence for Glasgow on
Thursday, nor he that went on Wednesday, have since been heard of; this
country was never so completely blocked up in the memory of the oldest
person, or that they ever heard of. I understand the road is ten feet
deep with snow from this to Hamilton. I have had it cut through once,
but this third fall makes an attempt impossible. Heaven only knows when
the road will be open, nothing but a thaw can do it--it is now an
intense frost."

But the guards and coachmen were put upon their mettle on other
occasions than when snow made further progress impossible.

The following incident, showing the courage and devotion to duty of a
mail guard and coachman, is related by Sir Thomas Dick Lauder, Bart., in
his account of the floods which devastated the province of Moray in
August 1829. Referring to the state of things in the town of Banff, Sir
Thomas proceeds: "The mail-coach had found it impracticable to proceed
south in the morning by its usual route, and had gone round by the
Bridge of Alva. It was therefore supposed that the mail for Inverness,
which reaches Banff in