London in a Fog.

Bruce Herald, Volume IX, Issue 804, 19 May 1876, Page 7

London in a Fog.

(From the ' Daily News.')

The dark veil that overhung the city on February llfch from morning to night waa sufficiently exceptional to merit som© kind of notice. Ifc was, in facfc, one of tha densest and uaosfo disagreeable fogs with which London has been visited for many a day, and combined with a severe frost, ib rendered street travelling almost as dangerous as ifc was difficult. Though late on the previous night there were signs of its coming, the white mist of a hoar frost had not changed to the murky cloud with which we are too familiar until after daybreak. Then, however, ifc speedily wrapped the city in darkness, and extended far away over the surrounding suburbs. By the hour when the activity of business life usually begins, all the thoroughfares were shrouded in gloom deeper than that of a moonless night. Where the streets open down to the river, fitful rays now and then struggled to assert; themselves, but only succeeded in casting a dreary cloud across the prevailing dulaess of the sky, like the fainfc gleam of a dying flame reflected on a column of smoke. Through the streets muffled figures moved like restless shadows, and almost as noiselessly, for the fog seemed to deaden sound nearly as much as ifc obscured the light. Ifc waa London by night, without the night life of London. The people seemed to lose individuality as the places did, and the impression on the mind was that of a weary succession of similar figures plodding through a monotonous line of throughfares without variety. AU tha marked features had disappeared. The Sfcrand was like Piccadilly; Fleet-street like the Strand ; and Cheapside like Fleet-street, the only difference being that of fche increasing roll of traffic, or the deepening shadow, as one exchanged tha broad ways of the west for the narrow and devious defiles of the east. Ludgate circus might have been Trafalgar square for all the character that; was left; in either. Standing afc the end of Fleefcofcreefc, and endeavoring to evolve some familiar form out ofthe darkness, ono only got a confused picture of blinking lights relieved against a dull, black wall, and only the appearance and disappearance of these lights marked the difference between tho roadways and the horses. Ia Sfc. Paul's Churchyard not a column or a pediment of the great Cathedral could be seen at times from the top of Ludgatehill. Standing within a few yards of the. pile an hour after noon, you would have looked in vain for a trace of its existence. No gleam of sunlight striking athwart tha fog sparkled on the gilded vane ; or if ifc did, the intervening curtain was too dense to lot a reflected ray through. From end to end of the city streets gas was flaring in the shop windows, but ifc failed to throw a light beyond the pavement; and from the opposiie side of the way each window looked as if many thicknesses of dingy yellow gauze had been drawn across ifc. How the police managed to regulate fche traffic from many quarters that converges in front of the Exchange must remain a mystery. There was little apparent diminution of the incessant stream of vehicles that one may see there at the sams hour any day, and yot fchey Tell into their places without confusion, and with no more than the \iaual number of rough but harmles-j collisions. Towards the riverside, though the darkness was not so deep, the fog seemed scarcely less dense. Looking over fche parapet of Londou bridge, one could hardly realise fchafc a broad and rapid river was flowing silently beneath. The eye seemed tb be gazing rather into impenetrable and interminable depths of murky vapor. No noise of busy steamboats throbbed on the air, for none could ply in such a fog. Occasionally a barge, rising on the tide, its decks aud gunwales white with rime, would flash suddenly out from this vapor, shoot tho arch, aud then swiftly and silently disappear, as if sliding down an unseen plane. Y\Tifch this exception the river traffic was for a while entirely suspended, while that on land seemed to be going on with little interruption. During the afternoon the fog lifted considerably, and left the city in comparative light, but it had only changed its place. From four to six o'clock some of tbe suburbs were enveloped ia a curtain of yellow mist, which the struggling street lamps utterly failed to illumine, and as night came on the traffic waa in many parts entirely sfcopped, while in others trams and omnibuses could only move afc a footpace.