290 
THE NATURAL HISTORY 
[LETT. 
kind of dread, with Avliicli the minds of men are always impressed 
by such strange and unusual phenomena. 
" ^ — — — As when tlie sun, new risen, 
Looks through the horizontal, misty air, 
Shorn of his beams ; or from behind the moon, 
In dim edipse, disastrous twilight sheds 
On half the nations, and with fear of change 
Perplexes monarchs — — — — " 
LETTER ex. 
TO THE HONOURABLE DAINES BARRINGTON. 
AVe 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 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 continu- 
ally 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 for this fact — for such it 
is — is that on that quarter between us and the sea there are 
continual mountains, hill behind hill, such as ]N"ore-hill, the 
Barnet, Butser-hill, and Ports-down, which somehow divert the 
storms, and give them a different direction. High promontories 
and elevated grounds have always been observed to attract 
clouds, and disarm them of their mischievous contents, which 
are discharged into the trees and summits as soon as they come 
^ 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." 
