248 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE, 
distressed the different counties of this kingdom, the peculiar 
haze, or smoky fog, that prevailed for many weeks in this 
island, and in every part of Europe, and even beyond its 
limits, was a most extraordinary appearance, unlike anything 
known within the memory of man. By my journal I find that 
I had noticed this strange occurrence from June 23d to July 
zoth, inclusive, 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- 
colored ferruginous light on the ground and floors of rooms ; 
but was particularly lurid and blood-colored 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, lowering 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 sprang 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 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 
phenomena. 
” As when the sun, new risen, 
Looks through the horizontal, misty air, 
Shorn of his beams ; or from behind the moon, 
In dim eclipse, disastrous twilight sheds 
On half the nations, and with fear of change 
Perplexes monarchs i 
