ation in the air. The fun, at noon, locked as blank as a clouded
moon, and (lied a ruft-coloured ferruginous light on the ground,
and floors of rooms ; but was particularly lurid and blood-coloured
at riling and fetting. All the time the heat was fo intenfe that
butchers’ meat could hardly be eaten on the day after it was killed;
and the flies fwarmed fo in the lanes and hedges that they rendered
the horfes half frantic, and riding irkfome. The country people
began to look with a fuperftitious awe at the red, louring afpeft of
the fun; and indeed there was reafon for the moft enlightened
perfon to be apprehenfive; for, all the while, Calabria and
part of the ifle of Sicily, were torn and convulfed with earthquakes
; and about that junfture a volcano fprung out of the fea
on the coaft of Norway. On this occalion Milton’s noble fimile of
the fun, in his firft book of Paradife Lojl, frequently occurred to
my mind; and it is indeed^ particularly applicable, becaufe, towards
the end, it alludes to a fuperftitious kind of dread, with which the
minds of men are always imprefled by fuch ftrange and unufual
phenomena.
<c — — — As when the fun, new rifen,
<{ Looks through the horizontal, nifty air,
<l Shorn of his beams ; or from behind the moon,
in dim eclipfe, difajlrous t^wiUght Jheds
<l On half the nations, and with fear of change
44 Perplexes monarchs — — — — —- —”
L E T T E R LXV.
TO THE SAME.
W e very feldom annoyed with thundcr-ftorms. and it is no
lefs remarkable than true, that thofe. which arife in the fouth have
hardly been known to reach this village; for, before they get over
us, they take a direftion to the eaft or to the weft, or fometimes
divide into two, and go in part to one of thofe quarters, and in
part to the other; as was truly the cafe in fummer 1783, when,
though the country round was continually harafled with tempefts,
and often from the fouth, yet we efcaped them a ll; as appears hy
my journal of that fummer. The only way that I can at all
account for this fadt— for fuch it is — is that, on that quartei,
between us and the fea, there are continual mountains, hill behind
hill, fuch as Nore-hill, the Barnet, Buffer-hill, and Pot ts-downy
which fome how divert the ftorms, and give them a different
dire&ion. High promontories, and elevated grounds, have always
been obferved to attraft. clouds and difarm them of their mif-
chievous contents, which are difeharged into the trees and
fummits as foon as they come in contaft with thofe turbulent
meteors ; while the humble vales efcape, becaufe they are fo far
beneath them.
But, when I fay I do not remember a thunder-ftorm from the
fouth,’ I do not mean that we. never have fufferedfrom thunder-
■ ftorms