60 ECLIPSE OF THE SUN 



with which he read our beautiful Liturgy, were indelibly- 

 impressed on my memory. 



But the chief occurrence that marked my short sojourn 

 at this pretty little market town, with its spacious street 

 — its well-built houses — their gardens and meads, flanked 

 by the beautiful river — from which it takes its name — 

 the lofty hills on all sides, forming a splendid amphi- 

 theatre — was a total eclipse of the sun. This was the 

 only perfect eclipse that has occurred in my memory : 

 that of 1858 was annular, and the great luminary was 

 never quite obscured, but apjoeared in the form of a cres- 

 cent, of a greater or less magnitude, as our satellite passed 

 over its disc ; therefore did it disappoint the expectations 

 of the credulous multitude, who looked for an absence of 

 all light, birds going to roost, and other symptoms of 

 coming night. 



The eclipse of 1 820 was a far greater obscuration, inas- 

 much as the j)lanet Yenus was plainly to be seen with the 

 naked eye at noonday in mid-heaven — a position in which 

 she is never visible, not even to the telescopic view of the 

 astronomer, and therefore the fact is scarcely credible to 

 the uninitiated in that most sublime and interesting of 

 all sciences. In a letter written to a friend on the day 

 I have thus described it : — 



' ' The single star, too, twinkling so soon after noon, and 

 the awful gloom cast over the atmosphere by so great an 

 obscuration of the source of light, produced a scene so 

 pleasingly singular, so rarely beautiful, so divinely 

 sublime, that the remembrance of it, I trust, Avill never 

 be erased from my mind, or the impression it left 

 removed from my heart. And here I must regret the 



