WEATHER. 



noticed this strange occurrence from June 23 to 

 July 20, inclusive, during which period the wind 

 varied to every quarter, without making any alter- 

 ation in the air. The sun, at noon, looked as hlank 

 as a clouded moon, and shed a rust-coloured ferru- 

 ginous 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 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 lowering 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 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, fre 

 quently 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 : 



" As when the sun, new risen, 



Looks through the horizontal misty air, 

 Shorn of his beams ; or from behind the moon, 

 In dim eclipse disastrous twilight sheds 

 On half the nations, and with fear of change 

 Perplexes monarchs." 



LXVI. 



WE are very seldom annoyed with thunder- 

 storms ; and it is no less remarkable than true, 

 12 



