280 EARTHQUAKES THUNDER-STORMS. 



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, 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 : 



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 n-itions, and with fear of change 

 Perplexes monarchs. 



LETTER CX. 



TO THE HON. DAINES HARRINGTON. 



WE are very seldom annoyed with thunder-storms ; and it 

 is no less remarkable than true, that those which arise in the 

 south have hardly been known to reach this village ; for, before 

 they get over us, they take a direction to the east or to the 

 west, or sometimes divide into two, and go in part to one of 

 those quarters, and in part to the other ; as was truly the case 

 in summer 1783, when, though the country round was con- 

 tinually harassed with tempests, and often from the south, yet 

 we escaped them all ; as appears by my journal of that summer. 



* The shocks of the dreadful earthquakes here alluded to began on the" 

 5th February, and continued, at different times, till the 1st of March, 

 1783; during which time, the face of the two Calabrias, lying between 

 the thirty-eighth and thirty-ninth degree, were entirely altered ; hills 

 had been swallowed up, others lowered ; huge mountains split asunder, 

 and parts of them driven to a considerable distance ; valleys filled up ; the 

 courses of rivers altered ; springs dried, and new ones formed. At 

 Laureana, in Calabria Ultra, two tenements, with large plantations, 

 situated in a level valley, were detached by the earthquake, and trans- 

 planted, with their trees still remaining in their places, to the distance of 

 about a mile from their first situation ; and from the spot on which they 

 formerly stood, hot water, mixed with sand, sprang to a considerable 

 height. It would be difficult to asssign the reason why Europe generally 

 was much affected in the electrical condition of its atmosphere during 

 this remarkable summer. ED. 



