beaten down by hailstones. At least, old
Matthew Paris gives this as the reason for the
peace; but, in real historic truth, Philip had
retreated before our king, subdued and
disheartened, so that we can scarcely count this as
one of the many meteorological miracles
currently believed. In 1382, when knights wore
helmets and hauberks, and horses were housed
in the gayest of colours; when men delighted in
particoloured legs, and ladies put on their heads
high conical extinguishers, further adorned by a
veil; when peaked shoes were fashionable,
square bodies worn among women of rank, and
"grammercy" and "by'r Lady" flavoured every
man's talk; in 1382, the fair Anne of Bohemia
landed in England to be the Second Richard's
queen. But the fair Anne brought with her a
storm that dashed her own ship to pieces in the
very harbour, and destroyed caravels and argosies
by the score. The same fate attended Isabella,
daughter of Charles the Sixth, Richard's second
queen; for, in spite of his grief at the loss of
Anne, which led him to raze Sheen, the palace
where she died, to the ground, he soon consoled
himself with another wife—who brought, as it
proved, another storm. All his baggage-ships
went down in the tempest that was raised so
soon as Isabella set foot on shore; ships were
driven by the dozen into land, and many lives
were lost; and the poor bewildered wearers of
peaked shoes went about helpless and distracted,
calling vainly on their patron saints, and thinking
that a rosary of Aves and Paters would have
power to save them.

Cromwell died September the 3rd, 1658; and,
on the night before, there was such a tempest as
was never known within the memory of any then
living. Trees were uprooted by hundreds in all
the parks and woods throughout England; houses
unroofed, buildings blown down, people killed
by accident of falling trees and hurling slates
as well as by mere force of wind, thrown down
and crushed, or blown into the sea or rivers.
Such a tumult was there in the air over all
Europe on that memorable night, that Cromwell's
enemies said that fiends were disputing for
his soul; his friends, that even the powers of the
air were lamenting, with mankind, the irreparable
loss they had sustained. "This great storm of
the night of September 2, 1658, reached to the
coasts of the Mediterranean," says Mr. JOHN
FORSTER, in his noble Life of Cromwell.* "It was
such a night in London as had rarely been passed
by dwellers in crowded streets. Trees were torn
from their roots in the the park, chimneys blown
down, and houses unroofed, in the city. It was
indeed, a night which prophesied a woful time to
England, but to Cromwell it proved a night of
happiness. It ushered in for him, far more
surely than at Worcester or Dunbar, his Fortunate
Day."

          * Statesmen of the Commonwealth.

But the Great Storm, on the 26th and 27th
November, 1703, was the worst of all. Eight
thousand people were lost in the floods of the Severn
and the Thames, and on the coast of Holland.
London sustained a damage of two millions of
pounds; twelve men-of-war, with eighteen
hundred men on board, were lost in sight of land; and
seventeen thousand trees were uprooted in Kent
alone. The Eddystone Lighthouse was blown
down, with Mr. Winstanley, its projector and
creator, and some of his friends, inside; and the
Bishop of Bath and Wells was killed, together
with his wife, while in bed at his palace in
Somersetshire. Much cattle was lost, and, in one
level alone, fifteen thousand sheep were drowned.
It was a terrible storm, and England long
remembered it—in the ruin of some, the cureless
sorrow of many, and the intense terror of all.
The Great Storm went beyond even the horrors
of the tempest which accompanied Cromwell's
soul to light and immortality. Fahrenheit was
a youth, perhaps musing over the first idea of
his new thermometer; Réaumur was a few years
older; and Daniel Defoe was a mature man, in
the full zenith of his powers, setting whole
bodies of men in flames, either of wrath or
curiosity.

In 1719, there was a fearful storm in Sweden,
when seven thousand Swedes perished on their
way to Drontheim; and on the 11th October,
1737, thirty thousand people perished by a
hurricane in India; a fleet of Indiamen, and a fearful
amount of shipping, were destroyed; and crops,
gardens, forests, and live stock, fell like chaff
before the wind. A house in London was set
on fire by lightning in 1768, and a man was
struck dead on his coach-box in the Kent-road,
his watch was shivered to a thousand pieces, a
small hole was found in the crown of his hat,
and a seam went down his breast. A few days
before this, there had been a terrific storm in
Edinburgh, when publie service was stopped, and
candles were lighted in private houses. Darkness,
black as night, and broken only by vivid
sheets of flame, gathered over the whole city,
and there fell a storm of heavy hail, so thick and
fast that it beat down both man and beast, slew
the lambs and yearlings on all the stock farms
about, and destroyed the harvest for miles round.
Two men saw a thunder-bolt strike the ground,
where it ploughed up a hole large enough for the
mainmast of a man-of-war. At Farnake the
lightning threw open a window. The Tweed rose
very high, and big stones, many tons in weight,
were floated down like pebbles. This storm was
at the end of July; and in the September of the
same year, the Serpentine in Hyde-park rose,
forced down part of the walls, and flowed over
the whole of Knightsbridge. The canal in St.
James's-park rose also, and the waters in
Bagnigge Wells rose eight feet. Cellars were all
afloat, and butts of beer sailed down the tide
into the Fleet Ditch, where they were fished out
by the people. At Hockley-in-the-Hole, the
inhabitants were fairly flooded out of the lower
stories; the Treasury was flooded, and the
sentinels were obliged to quit their posts, literally
washed away; in Westminster every cellar was
filled, and forty craft were sunk in the river. In
November, when Wilkes addressed his letter to
the electors and freemen from the King's Bench,