LAST WEEK.
What was the most marked feature in the week ending on the 10th of January, 1861? Clearly—The Frost! There is some mysterious and overruling power which provides for the ever-recurring necessities of our editors, and of the public for whom they in their turn spread the daily banquet. Even with the battles, murders, crimes, intrigues, revolutions of the world to draw upon—with all the new books, and new plays, and new operas, and new pictures open to their criticism, it must be a hard matter for the conductors of our public journals to find matter for 313 “issues” in the course of every year. When Parliament, and the Law Courts—especially the Courts of Chancery—are sitting, there is much balm for the editorial soul, a sober certainty of waking consciousness that for twenty-four columns at least—barring the labour of “cutting down”—they are safe. No daring reader—with the exception, perhaps, of the Chancery client more immediately interested, or the eloquent member who has made the telling speech—will risk himself into that arctic region of frozen print. No one will run the risk of being closed up for an indefinite time amidst those icebergs of the intellect. So far it is well; but when the British Parliament passes away like a dream of the night, or a tale which is told, and Chancery judges, and Chancery lawyers relapse into the normal conditions of humanity, the fate of our editors is less endurable. Were it not that some gentle influence from above sends from time to time a Horsman to Stroud, or permits that large gooseberries—in the Scottish vernacular, “blobs”—should flourish during the autumnal months in the distant county of Caithness, what would become of him? For six months of the year a daily newspaper is a bolter, and will scarce yield obedience to the restraining hand of the editorial Chifney—for six other months it is a slug, and requires the soft incentives of whip and spur to keep it in its place. That task of weaving of the daily leaders out of one’s own bowels—as one may say—is a hard one indeed. It is difficult to conceive a more appalling destiny for a journalist of untidy moral character, than that he should be condemned to produce a leading article every day throughout eternity, even when intelligence is slack, and fashionable arrivals rare in the regions where it has been appointed that he should take up his final dwelling-place. The autumnal months—and the weeks of early winter which immediately precede the meeting of parliament—usually give our editors a foretaste of this form of bliss. But for this year the Frost has come to their assistance, and carried them triumphantly through what sailors would term the “doldrums” of their harassing occupation.
In truth it has been a rare frost, and even whilst these lines are committed to paper the Thames is frozen over at Battersea, and by the time they are given to the public, unless a thaw should intervene, of the fairway, even at London Bridge, there will be an end. As you look from the bridges down upon what is usually the great water thoroughfare of London, you see it choked with masses of ice of such size, that the navigation is already well-nigh stopped. At Rochester amateurs are getting their skates ready, and as one of the events of Last Week it may be reported that the Medway was frozen over at Rochester Bridge. Very many years have elapsed since such a sight has been seen. In the southern counties of England the reporters tell us of 38 degrees of frost; and in the eastern counties, of 40 degrees. The ice on the Trent is of great thickness, and the great Yorkshire rivers are quite frozen over.
A very curious phenomenon—which illustrates the severity of this season in a very striking manner—has been recorded by naturalists as having been witnessed in the neighbourhood of Pontefract and Doncaster. It is said that the intensity of the frost has affected the plumage of the birds in that district, and that several which have been shot have proved quite pie-bald. Every one who has dabbled in arctic travels—pleasant reading by a bright fireside in latitude 52!—will remember that the plumage of the birds of the arctic regions is naturally colourless and white. It requires the genial warmth of sunnier climes to provide the humming-bird with its irridescent court-dress, and to clothe the parrot—that harlequin of the woods—in its brilliant motley. Just now it is Northward-Ho with our poor little English birds, and it is to be feared that as far as they are concerned the frost will finish the task of destruction which the floods of last year in the breeding time had too effectually begun. If so, we shall miss them next season, and discover to our loss that they have another use in the economy of nature than merely to make our hedgerows and coverts delightful with song.
But what a strange scene was witnessed in our London Parks Last Week. Why this was to be at Moscow, or St. Petersburgh, or to enjoy ourselves after the fashion of men about town at Nishni-Novgorod. Night after night there were very many hundreds—nay, thousands—of persons skating by torch-light. During these icy Saturnalia you might have seen crowds—many women amongst them—weaving fantastic dances; each one with skate on foot, and torch in hand, as merrily as though the floor had been chalked for their use in some pleasant ball-room “during the season.” The quicksilver in the thermometer stood at very many degrees below freezing point, but the intensity of the cold seemed only to give additional fervour to the amusement. The objects of human ambition had become changed. Happy was the mortal whose proficiency on the “outside edge” was unquestioned—happier still the adept who could cut you the figure 8 backwards in a careless and easy manner, as though such were the natural fashion of locomotion in this slippery world. Then there were games of nine-pins played out upon the ice, with a vigour which would have put the champions of our American bowling alleys to the blush. It was delightful to witness the effect of one’s own puny prowess as the ball darted over the ice as though impelled by the arm of a stalwart champion in this kind. Nor were bands of music wanting, nor displays of fireworks, to give glory to this strange scene; while amidst this strange medley of sights and sounds—the ‘Express Skating Train’ would flash past, giving one the
