
TOTAL SOLAR ECLIPSE OF 1851. 507 
darker than the background, on which they are projected. The air becomes sen- 
sibly colder, the clouds darker, and the whole atmosphere murkier. From moment 
to moment, as the totality approaches, the cold and the darkness advance apace; 
and there is something peculiarly awful and terribly convincing in the two different 
senses so entirely coinciding in their indications of an unprecedented fact being 
in course of accomplishment. Sudderly, and apparently without any warning, so 
immensely greater are its effects than those of anything else that had before 
occurred,—the totality supervenes, and darkness comes down. The shadow of 
the moon must evidently have a very well-defined termination ; and those who 
have seen a large eclipse, or even an annular one, have no idea what a total 
eclipse is like. Then suddenly came into view lurid lights and forms, as, on the 
extinction of the candles, a phantasmagoric picture, before unnoticed, may be 
made to appear prominently imposing in a darkened room. This was the 
most striking point of the whole phenomenon, and was precisely that which 
made the Norse peasants about us fly with precipitation, and hide themselves 
for their lives. Darkness was everywhere, in heaven and in earth, except 
where along the north-eastern horizon a narrow strip of unclouded sky pre- 
sented a low burning tone of colour, and where some distant snow-covered 
mountains, beyond the range of the moon’s shadow, reflected the faint mono- 
chromatic light of the partially-eclipsed sun; and exhibited all the detail of 
their structure, the light and shade and markings on their precipitous sides, 
with an apparently supernatural distinctness. After a little time, the eyes 
seemed to get accustomed to the darkness, and the looming forms of objects close 
by could be discerned, all of them exhibiting a dull green hue; seeming to have 
exhaled their natural colours, and to have taken this particular one, merely by 
force of the red colour in the north. Life and animation seemed indeed to have 
now departed from everything around; and we could hardly but fear, against 
our reason, that if such a state of things were to last much longer, some dread- 
ful calamity must happen to us also. While the lurid horizon northward, ap- 
peared so like the gleams of departing light in some of the grandest of the works 
of Martin and Dansy, that one could not at the time, and in that presence, but 
believe, in spite of their alleged extravagances, that nature has opened up to the 
constant contemplation of their mind’s eyes, some of those magnificent revela- 
tions of power and glory, which others can only get a hasty glimpse of on occa- 
sions such as these. 
To this part of the scene the plate refers, and may, perhaps, be considered a 
successful work on the part of the engraver, Mr James Fakp, in giving an idea in 
mere black and white, of the dark mysterious colouring of the scene. On other 
sides, rain clouds and falling rain, prevented any such striking effects as those 
just detailed, and within three minutes, the light of day was prevailing again. 
So much, then, for the general effects of this total eclipse, and may the next 
VOL. XX. PART III. 6x 
