WEATHER. WEATHER! How varied are the feelings to which the word and the idea give birth, according to the circumstances of the individual ! Take, for example, that schoolboy who just before going to bed looks so anxiously from his window out on the night. To-morrow will be a holiday, and he almost shudders to think that it may be rainy. "As miserable as a wet holiday" is a comparison we have met with, and most assuredly our schoolboy is not the person to deny its perfect fitness. Again, there is a family party; they are talking about a picnic which, in conjunction with some friends, they have organized for the next day. It seems to them that nothing but a wet day or a very high wind can mar their enjoyment. The day will be fine enough. In our prophetic capacity (which belongs to us in common with all who wield the pen) we can foresee that; but we also know that the picnic will be a failure. Some of the party, by means of what have well been called "the unaccountable irrationalities of ill-temper," will spoil it, throwing cold water upon the affair as really and effectually, if not as literally, as a waterspout could. But "the weather" suggests other and very different ideas to another person, for he is very differently circumstanced. The commander of that ship, now halfway across the Atlantic, which, heaving and tossing on the waves, still urges her course through them, impelled by sails, or screw, or paddles, he too is anxious about the weather, although not quite in the same way as the schoolboy or the picnic party. He is absolute ruler on board his vessel, and like most such rulers he pays the price of his power in the tremendous responsibility which he sustains. The crew, the passengers, the cargo, the ship itself, all depend (so far as they can depend on any mortal being) on him for their safety. How anxiously his eye explores that quarter of the heavens where his matured experience tells him that the first signs of the coming tempest may be expected to show themselves! How earnestly he consults with the first mate as they stand together on the quarter deck, and how his quick glances consult the compass, bright in the glare of the binnacle lamps, as he every now and then gives his orders to the man at the wheel, orders echoed mechanically in a sing-song tone, which sounds strangely * The steersman always repeats the captain's orders, to show that he has heard them correctly-a most important precaution where a mistake might be attended with the most fatal results. business-like where matters are or may soon be serious! The sea captain, and every seafaring man, has an interest in the weather, but it is not a holiday or picnic, a great-coat or umbrella interest. And this last is all that tarry-at-home folks for the most part think about. A few of the more thoughtful, and of course all those who are personally and directly concerned, do think of weather as having an influence on the agricultural prospects of a country. That influence, known as it must be to all, affords the most familiar, if not the most striking, example and illustration of this characteristic of weather, that whereas its slighter variations are absolutely insignificant, these, when they become excessive in any direction, are the most fearful because the most resistless scourges. In these countries we rarely suffer from drought, owing to our insular position, nor, indeed, are the effects of a dry summer usually very disastrous. One such is within our own recollection, and a most abundant harvest was the result. It is far otherwise, however, with an excess of rain, which is always most destructive; the potato disease in particular is invariably aggravated by it. In the dry season above alluded to it scarcely appeared. There is a pleasure highly extolled by poets, and, indeed, by prose writers too, that of enjoying the comfort of a warm home, and, above all, of a snug fireside, while "the pitiless storm" is raging abroad. We fear there is a large element of selfishness in this feeling. For our own part, we are far from insensible to these comforts, and trust we feel thankful for them to the Giver of all good; but we own that in all varieties of inclement weather we cannot help thinking of the poor, their ill-fitting doors and windows, their insufficient clothing, bed-covering, and fuel; we may add food also, the quality and quantity of which have more to do with the capacity of the body for resisting cold than is generally known; and in time of storm, when the wind roars and rumbles in the chimney, and the rain patters against the glass, we think of the fisherman and the sailor, and of another personage too, who we fear comes in for but a small share of general sympathy, we mean the engine-driver on the railway; his exposed situation, the open plains and often high embankments over which his course must sometimes lie, joined to the speed at which he travels,* make a night of storm and rain a serious affair to him. There is a notion very prevalent that in the winter months severe frost, being, as it is called, "seasonable," is healthful. We hear much of the wholesomeness of "bracing" weather, and a deadly effect is ascribed to green Christmas." We doubt that this theory 66 * Sir Francis Head calls attention to the fact, obvious enough when stated, that when a train is proceeding against the wind, the speed of the latter is practically increased by that of the former, and a moderately high wind may thus be to the engine-driver, stoker, &c., to all intents and purposes a perfect hurricane. would stand the test of facts. To the young, healthy, and robust, frost may be agreeably bracing, and so far salubrious that it admits of outdoor exercise to a large extent. But, in truth, to such persons, so far as health is concerned, all weathers are pretty much alike; and it is to another class we must turn if we would know the real effects of severe weather in winter. How is it with the aged and infirm the victims of rheumatism, the asthmatic, the consumptive? Increased suffering, aggravated symptoms, in a multitude of cases death, tell their own tale. The statistics of mortality prove this beyond a doubt; and this even where wealth insures to the sufferer all the protection (and it is not a little) that can be purchased. Of the case of the sick and infirm poor it is superfluous to speak. The vast influence which weather can exercise on the destinies of man is perhaps nowhere so powerfully exemplified as in its effects, when unfavourable, on the best equipped and organized army. Even in its mildest form, rain, unaccompanied by any excessive degree of cold, roads become so "cut up" as to be nearly or altogether impassable for baggage and artillery, while long marches in the rain and bivouacs on the wet soil are sure to sow the seeds of disease and death among the troops. But all varieties of weather with which an army can have to contend must yield the palm to the frosts and snows of a Northern winter. A summer campaign within the tropics is indeed trying, as our soldiers found it within the last few years in India. Yet much may be done in this case to spare the troops by marching in the night or the cool of the early morning, and resting during the heat of the day. But from the resistless, all-pervading frost there is no refuge. The disastrous retreat of the French army from Moscow will occur to every one. Its history furnishes many an appalling picture of human suffering, and the destruction of human life, under circumstances of surpassing horror. Imagination fails in the effort to realize it; only an approach to the conception can be made by those who have passed a winter in Eastern (Lower) Canada. They can, to a certain extent, imagine the toil-worn and half-famished soldier slowly and wearily making his way through the deep drifts, benumbed and frost-bitten, with stagnating blood, the torpor of sleep irresistibly growing upon him, only too sure a herald of the last sleep of all.* Thunderstorms are of comparatively rare occurrence in the British Isles, and are still more rarely of a very violent character. * The writer has experienced a degree of cold in Canada which would infallibly destroy an army exposed to its effects during a march of any considerable length. The author of “The Retrospect” asserts (as an eye-witness) that death from excessive cold is by no means in all cases the painless "sleeping out of life" that is commonly supposed. He states that the first stupor is often succeeded by violent convulsions, which would appear from his description to be not unlike epilepsy. Those who derive their ideas of thunder and lightning only from what may be witnessed at home can form but a very inadequate idea of the type which these phenomena assume within the tropics, or even in more northern latitudes, where a very cold winter is succceded by a very hot summer. There the flashes follow each other almost as rapidly as they can be counted, and the thunder, instead of a succession of peals, separated by considerable intervals, forms an uninterrupted rattling, roaring, and rumbling, louder by far, as the lightning is also more vivid, than anything of which our climate furnishes an example. Yet even with us there is something aweinspiring in a thunderstorm, and this independently of any consideration of danger. To some persons the feeling of dread produced thus is absolutely overwhelming: in vain are they convinced that the elemental war is too remote to do any injury; this fear is quite uncontrollable by reason, and this is not unfrequently the case with those who are far from being deficient in nerve in the presence of real danger of a different kind. The Hebrews called thunder "the Voice of God," and however we may be inclined to look upon the epithet as only highly figurative, and, according to the genius of their language, expressing only greatness, of which, indeed, other instances might be adduced, it must be admitted that one passage of Scripture, at least, employs the term in a sense not to be mistaken. In Psalm xxix. it occurs no less than six times in ver. 3 it is explained by "The God of glory thundereth;" while in the remaining verses the effects described are precisely those of the phenomenon in question. It is also, to say the least, remarkable, that when, on one occasion, God actually spoke from heaven in the words, "I have both glorified it, and will glorify it again," some of "the people, that stood by, and heard it, said that it thundered." That vicissitudes and extremes of weather should be found in the character of instruments in the hand of God for the protection of His people, and the punishment of His enemies, is exactly what might be expected; and, accordingly, not only do we find in the pages of the inspired volume, " Fire and hail, snow and vapours, stormy wind fulfilling His word," but the part which they have filled in the divine administration offers by far the most interesting matter for reflection afforded by the subject before us. The Deluge will at once occur to the mind of every reader; but although the first, and, at the same time, the most general of this or any other class of judgments, it is one with which we are all familiar; while our space compels us to confine our attention to others which present the same or similar features, but less obviously. Will it seem strange if we connect the seven years of plenty, followed by seven of famine in Egypt, with weather as their cause? True, "the family of Egypt have no rain;" but, as is well known, the question of plenty or scarcity is decided by the periodical rise of the Nile.* If this inundation be either deficient or excessive, dearth, or even famine, must follow. Now to what is this overflow due? It can be traced to no other cause than the fall of rain or the melting of snows at and about the mountain sources of the Nile. Of the important bearing of these providential arrangements on the destinies of the people of God it is needless to speak here. Prominent among the judgments with which this unhappy land was long afterwards visited we find "hail, and fire mingled with the hail." A visitation so entirely without a precedent in that country, so obviously miraculous too, must have been beyond conception terrible to the inhabitants. Yet these were not its worst features. When we think of hail it is as a shower of minute particles of spongy ice, which, if driven in our faces, causes us some slight inconvenience. But hail is not always, in this country even, so innocuous. A few years ago the Irish metropolis was traversed by a hail shower, borne on a strong west wind, and not an entire pane was left in any window which happened to face that point of the compass. Glass is, however, after all, but fragile. But a vineyard in the south of France, which lay in the track of a hailstorm, is described as looking as if it had been exposed to repeated discharges of grape-shot. That the same agency should destroy life when exposed to its effects is what might be expected, and we have read of an instance in which a child who had been abroad during such a storm was found dead. A deep perforation in the neck was the only serious injury visible; the hailstone had struck and pierced just as a bullet would do, and then, thawed by the still remaining warmth of the body, had left no trace except the fatal wound. We can then understand the warning to "make the servants and the cattle flee into the houses;" and we need not wonder that where this precaution was neglected, "the hail smote both man and beast;" nor that it "brake every tree of the field." Hailstones no larger than have been known to fall in modern times, falling from a sufficient height,† would be quite adequate to the production of even such terrible results. We have read of hailstones as large as plums, nor do we consider this at all incredible, although a much smaller size would suffice for a most destructive effect. "A strong east wind" was the instrument selected for dividing * Was not this intimated in Pharaoh's dreams by the "kine," both fat and lean, arising out of the river? † Much depends on this, for the velocity of a falling body increases continually and by a rapid progression during its descent. For this reason the "ballast" which aëronauts throw out when they wish to rise consists of very fine sand, as even a small pebble, if dropped from the height to which a balloon sometimes rises, would be dangerous. |