e since wanted to borrow money of him on the strength
of his professions. But you must remember we are in July; the 13th it
is, and summer will go and cold weather stay ('_come_' forsooth!)--and
now is the time of times. Still I feared the rain would hinder you on
Friday--but the thunder did not frighten me--for you: your father must
pardon me for holding most firmly with Dr. Chambers--his theory is
quite borne out by my own experience, for I have seen a man it were
foolish to call a coward, a great fellow too, all but die away in a
thunderstorm, though he had quite science enough to explain why there
was no immediate danger at all--whereupon his younger brother
suggested that he should just go out and treat us to a repetition of
Franklin's experiment with the cloud and the kite--a well-timed
proposition which sent the Explainer down with a white face into the
cellar. What a grand sight your tree was--_is_, for I see it. My
father has a print of a tree so struck--torn to ribbons, as you
describe--but the rose-mark is striking and new to me. We had a good
storm on our last voyage, but I went to bed at the end, as I
thought--and only found there had been lightning next day by the bare
poles under which we were riding: but the finest mountain fit of the
kind I ever saw has an unfortunately ludicrous association. It was at
Possagno, among the Euganean Hills, and I was at a poor house in the
town--an old woman was before a little picture of the Virgin, and at
every fresh clap she lighted, with the oddest sputtering muttering
mouthful of prayer imaginable, an inch of guttery candle, which, the
instant the last echo had rolled away, she as constantly blew out
again for saving's sake--having, of course, to _light the smoke_ of
it, about an instant after that: the expenditure in wax at which the
elements might be propitiated, you see, was a matter for curious
calculation. I suppose I ought to have bought the whole taper for some
four or five centesimi (100 of which make 8d. English) and so kept the
countryside safe for about a century of bad weather. Leigh Hunt tells
you a story he had from Byron, of kindred philosophy in a Jew who was
surprised by a thunderstorm while he was dining on bacon--he tried to
eat between-whiles, but the flashes were as pertinacious as he, so at
last he pushed his plate away, just remarking with a compassionate
shrug, 'all this fuss about a piece of pork!' By the way, what a
characteristic of an Italia