LETTER LXIV 



TO THE SAME 



THE summer of the year 1783 was an amazing and por- 

 tentous one, and full of horrible phaenomena ; for, besides 

 the alarming meteors and tremendous thunder-storms that 

 affrighted and distressed 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 it's 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 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 apprehensive ; 

 for, all the while, Calabria and part of the isle of Sicily, 

 were torn and convulsed with earthquakes ; 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, 



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