OF SELBORNE. 155 



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 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, louring aspect 

 of the sun ; and indeed there was reason 

 for the most enlightened person to be ap- 

 prehensive ; for all the while, Calabria and 

 part of the isle of Sicily, were torn and con- 

 vulsed with earthquakes ; and about that 

 juncture a volcano sprung out of the sea on 

 the coast of Norway. On this occasion 

 Miltoris 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 

 phsenomena. 



