302 
NATURAL HISTORY 
atlon in the air. Tiie fun, at noon, looked as blank as a clouded 
moon, and flied a ruft-coloured ferruginous light on the ground, 
and floors of rooms ; hut was particularly lurid and blood-coloured 
at riling and fetting. All the time the heat was fo intenfe that 
butchers' meat could hardly be eaten on the day after it was killed; 
and the flies fwarmed fo in the lanes and hedges that they rendered 
the horfes half frantic, and riding irkfome. The country people 
began to look with a fuperftitious awe at the red, louring afpedl of 
the fun ; and indeed there was reafon for the moft enlightened 
perfon to be apprehenfive ; for, all the while, Calabria and 
part of the ifle of Sicily, were torn and convulfed with earth- 
quakes ; and about that junfture a volcano fprung out of the fea 
on the coaft of Norway. On this occafion Milton % noble fimile of 
the fun, in liis firfl: book of Paradife Loft, frequently occurred to 
my mind ; and it is indeed particularly applicable, becaufe, towards 
the end, it alludes to a fuperftitious kind of dread, with which the 
minds of men are always imprefled by fuch ftrange and unufual 
phienomena. 
" — — — ■ As when the fun, new rifen, 
" Looks through the horizontal, mifly air, 
" Shorn of his beams ; or from behind the moon, 
" In dim eclipfe, difafirous twilight focds 
" On half the nations, and with fear of change 
" Tcrpkxcs monarchs ' — — — ■ — — . - 
LETTER 
