NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 281 
Li Bo Bs ha XV, 
TO THE SAME. 
THE summer of the year 1783 was an amazing and portentous 
one, and full of horrible pheenomena ; for, besides the alarming 
meteors and tremendous thunder-storms that affrighted and dis- 
tressed the different counties of this kingdom, the peculiar haze, or 
smoky fog, that prevailed for many weeks in this island, and in 
every part of Europe, and even beyond its limits, was a most 
extraordinary appearance, unlike anything known within the 
memory of man. By my journal I find that I had noticed this 
strange occurrence from June 23rd to July 20th inclusive, during 
which period the wind varied to every quarter without making any 
alteration in the air. The sun, at noon, looked as blank as a 
clouded moon, and shed a rust-coloured ferruginous light on the 
ground, and floors of rooms; but was particularly lurid and blood- 
coloured at rising and setting. All the time the heat was so intense 
that butchers’ meat could hardly be eaten on the day after it was 
killed ; and the flies swarmed so in the lanes and hedges that they 
rendered the horses half frantic, and riding irksome. The country 
people began to look with a superstitious awe at the red, louring 
aspect of the sun; and indeed there was reason for the most 
enlightened person to be apprehensive ; for, all the while, Calabria 
and part of the isle of Sicily, were torn and convulsed with earth- 
quakes ; and about that juncture a volcano sprang out of the sea 
on the coast of Norway. On this occasion Milton’s noble simile of 
the sun, in his first book of “ Paradise Lost,” frequently occurred 
to my mind; and it is indeed particularly applicable, because, 
towards the end, it alludes to a superstitious kind of dread, with 
which the minds of men are always impressed by such strange and 
unusual phenomena. 
‘¢ —.- As when the sw, new risen, 
Looks through the horizontal, #zzszy air, 
Shorn of his deams ; or from behind the moon, 
In ai eclipse, disastrous twilight sheds 
On half the nations, and with Sear of change 
Perplexes monarchs——.”’ 
