ng
the whole of the year, except the early autumn. This autumnal
abdication is, I hope, beginning: it blew but feebly yesterday, though
without intermission, from the north, making every shady place cold,
while the sun was burning; its effect on the sky being only to dim the
blue of it between masses of ragged cumulus. To-day it has entirely
fallen; and there seems hope of bright weather, the first for me since
the end of May, when I had two fine days at Aylesbury; the third,
May 28th, being black again from morning to evening. There seems to be
some reference to the blackness caused by the prevalence of this wind
in the old French name of Bise, '_gray_ wind'; and, indeed, one of the
darkest and bitterest days of it I ever saw was at Vevay in 1872."

* * * * *

The first time I recognized the clouds brought by the plague-wind
as distinct in character was in walking back from Oxford, after a
hard day's work, to Abingdon, in the early spring of 1871: it would
take too long to give you any account this evening of the
particulars which drew my attention to them; but during the
following months I had too frequent opportunities of verifying my
first thoughts of them, and on the first of July in that year wrote
the description of them which begins the 'Fors Clavigera' of
August, thus:--

"It is the first of July, and I sit down to write by the dismalest
light that ever yet I wrote by; namely, the light of this midsummer
morning, in mid-England, (Matlock, Derbyshire), in the year 1871.

"For the sky is covered with gray cloud;--not rain-cloud, but a dry
black veil, which no ray of sunshine can pierce; partly diffused in
mist, feeble mist, enough to make distant objects unintelligible,
yet without any substance, or wreathing, or color of its own. And
everywhere the leaves of the trees are shaking fitfully, as they do
before a thunder-storm; only not violently, but enough to show the
passing to and fro of a strange, bitter, blighting wind. Dismal
enough, had it been the first morning of its kind that summer had
sent. But during all this spring, in London, and at Oxford, through
meager March, through changelessly sullen April, through
despondent May, and darkened June, morning after morning has
come gray-shrouded thus.

"And it is a new thing to me, and a very dreadful one. I am fifty
years old, and more; and since I was five, have gleaned the best
hours of my life in the sun of spring and sum