OF SELBOIINE. 155 



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 ap- 

 prehensive ; for, all the while, Calabria and 

 part of the isle of Sicily, were torn and con- 

 vulsed with earthquakes ; and about that 

 juncture a volcano sprung out of the sea on 

 the coast of Norway. On this occasion 

 Milton $ 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. 



