think of it, the less explicable
it will become to you."

Thus far then of clouds that were once familiar; now at last,
entering on my immediate subject, I shall best introduce it to you
by reading an entry in my diary which gives progressive description
of the most gentle aspect of the modern plague-cloud.

"_Bolton Abbey, 4th July, 1875._

Half-past eight, morning; the first bright morning for the last
fortnight.

At half-past five it was entirely clear, and entirely calm; the
moorlands glowing, and the Wharfe glittering in sacred light, and
even the thin-stemmed field-flowers quiet as stars, in the peace in
which--

'All trees and simples, great and small,
That balmy leaf do bear,
Than they were painted on a wall,
No more do move, nor steir.'

But, an hour ago, the leaves at my window first shook slightly.
They are now trembling _continuously_, as those of all the trees,
under a gradually rising wind, of which the tremulous action
scarcely permits the direction to be defined,--but which falls and
returns in fits of varying force, like those which precede a
thunderstorm--never wholly ceasing: the direction of its upper
current is shown by a few ragged white clouds, moving fast from the
north, which rose, at the time of the first leaf-shaking, behind
the edge of the moors in the east.

This wind is the plague-wind of the eighth decade of years in the
nineteenth century; a period which will assuredly be recognized in
future meteorological history as one of phenomena hitherto unrecorded
in the courses of nature, and characterized pre-eminently by the
almost ceaseless action of this calamitous wind. While I have been
writing these sentences, the white clouds above specified have
increased to twice the size they had when I began to write; and in
about two hours from this time--say by eleven o'clock, if the wind
continue,--the whole sky will be dark with them, as it was yesterday,
and has been through prolonged periods during the last five years. I
first noticed the definite character of this wind, and of the clouds
it brings with it, in the year 1871, describing it then in the July
number of 'Fors Clavigera'; but little, at that time, apprehending
either its universality, or any probability of its annual continuance.
I am able now to state positively that its range of power extends from
the North of England to Sicily; and that it blows more or less duri