OF SELBORNE. 397 



LETTER LXV. 



TO THE SAME. 



THE summer of the year 1783 was an amazing and 

 portentous one, and full of horrible phenomena ; for, 

 besides the alarming meteors and tremendous thunder- 

 storms that affrighted and distressed the different coun- 

 ties 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 any thing known 

 within the memory of man. By my journal I find that 

 I had noticed this strange occurrence from June 23 to 

 July 20 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 apprehen- 

 sive ; for, all the while, Calabria and part of the isle of 

 Sicily were torn and convulsed with earthquakes ; and 

 about that juncture a volcano sprung 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 parti- 

 cularly 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 un- 

 usual phenomena. 



