... 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....
Letter LXVI
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 summer 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 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 Nore-hill,
the Barnet, Butser-hill, and Ports-down, which somehow divert the
storms, and give them a different direction.
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