NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 285 



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, 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 sprang out of the sea on the coast of Norway, 

 On this occasion Milton's noble simile of the sun, in his 

 lirst 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 tvnlight sheds 

 On half the nations, and with /ear of change 

 Perplexes monarchs ." 



LETTER LXVI. 



We are very seldom annoyed with thunderstorms : 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 in two, go in part to one 

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



