As when the sun, new risen, 



Looks through the horizontal, misty air, 

 Shorn of his beams ; or fi-om behind the moon, 

 In dim eclipse, disastrous twilight sheds 

 On half the nations, and with fear of change 

 Perplexes monarchs " 



LETTER ex. 

 To THE Honourable Daines Barrington. 



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 the summer of 1783, when, 

 though the country round was continually harassed 

 with tempests, and often from the south ; yet we 

 escaped them all, as appears by my journal of that 

 summer.* The only way that I can at all account 



* Storms. — To this awful summer of 1783, Cowper also alludes in his 

 " Task," book ii. p. 41 : — 



" A world that seems . • 



To toll the death-bell of its own decease ; 

 And by the voice of all the elements 

 To preach the general doom." 



195 



