beyond its limits, was a most extraordinary appear- 

 ance, 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 inclu- 

 sive, 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 par- 

 ticularly lurid and blood-coloured at rising and set- 

 ting. 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 peo- 

 ple 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 

 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 applica- 

 ble, because, towards the end, it alludes to a super- 

 stitious kind of dread, with which the minds of 

 men are always impressed by such strange and un- 

 usual phenomena. 



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