_"22d June, 1876._

Thunderstorm; pitch dark, with no _blackness_,--but deep, high,
_filthiness_ of lurid, yet not sublimely lurid, smoke-cloud; dense
manufacturing mist; fearful squalls of shivery wind, making Mr.
Severn's sail quiver like a man in a fever fit--all about four,
afternoon--but only two or three claps of thunder, and feeble,
though near, flashes. I never saw such a dirty, weak, foul storm.
It cleared suddenly, after raining all afternoon, at half-past
eight to nine, into pure, natural weather,--low rain-clouds on
quite clear, green, wet hills.

_Brantwood, 13th August, 1879._

The most terrific and horrible thunderstorm, this morning, I ever
remember. It waked me at six, or a little before--then rolling
incessantly, like railway luggage trains, quite ghastly in its
mockery of them--the air one loathsome mass of sultry and foul fog,
like smoke; scarcely raining at all, but increasing to heavier
rollings, with flashes quivering vaguely through all the air, and
at last terrific double streams of reddish-violet fire, not forked
or zigzag, but rippled rivulets--two at the same instant some
twenty to thirty degrees apart, and lasting on the eye at least
half a second, with grand artillery-peals following; not rattling
crashes, or irregular cracklings, but delivered volleys. It lasted
an hour, then passed off, clearing a little, without rain to speak
of,--not a glimpse of blue,--and now, half-past seven, seems
settling down again into Manchester devil's darkness.

Quarter to eight, morning.--Thunder returned, all the air collapsed
into one black fog, the hills invisible, and scarcely visible the
opposite shore; heavy rain in short fits, and frequent, though less
formidable, flashes, and shorter thunder. While I have written this
sentence the cloud has again dissolved itself, like a nasty
solution in a bottle, with miraculous and unnatural rapidity, and
the hills are in sight again; a double-forked flash--rippled, I
mean, like the others--starts into its frightful ladder of light
between me and Wetherlam, as I raise my eyes. All black above, a
rugged spray cloud on the Eaglet. (The 'Eaglet' is my own name for
the bold and elevated crag to the west of the little lake above
Coniston mines. It had no name among the country people, and is one
of the most conspicuous features of the mountain chain, as seen
from Brantwood.)

Half-past eight.--Three times light and thre