said
Dall immediately, not at all bethinking herself how ancient a
device on the shield of the Island of Man the three legs were, or
knowing how much more ancient on the coins of Crotona, I think, or
some other of the Magna Grecian colonies.

The hours which prevail here are those of our shop-keeping
population; they rise and go to business very early, dine at three,
which indeed is considered late, take tea at five, and supper at
nine, which seems to us very primitive.... The women here are,
generally speaking, very pretty little creatures, with a great deal
of freshness and brilliancy; they dress in the extreme of the
French fashion, and, I suppose from some unfavorable influence of
the climate, they lose their beauty prematurely--they become
full-blown very early, and their bloom is extremely evanescent;
they fade almost suddenly.... There seems to be a great deal of
consumption here. The climate is as capricious as ours, with this
additional disadvantage, that the extremes of heat and cold are
much more intense, and the transitions much more violent, the
temperature varying occasionally as much as thirty degrees in the
twenty-four hours. I have just left off writing for five minutes to
watch the lightning, which is dancing in a fiery ring all round the
horizon--summer lightning, no thunder, although the flashes are
strong and vivid....

We have had such a tremendous storm--really gorgeous, grand, and
awful; lightning that stretched from side to side of the sky,
making a blaze like daylight for several seconds at a time. The
mere reflection of it on the ground was more than the eye could
endure; great forked ribbons of fire darting into the very bosom of
the city and its crowded dwellings, or zigzagging through the air
to an accompaniment of short, sharp, crackling thunder, succeeded
by endless, deep, full-toned rolls that made the whole air shake
and vibrate with the heavy concussion; pelting and pouring rain, a
perfect tornado of wind. Heaven and earth are all, while I write,
one livid, violet-colored flame, and the thunder resounds through
the wild frenzy of the elements like the voice of "the Ruler of the
spirits." My eyes ache with the incessant glare, and I must close
my letter, for it is past eleven o'clock, and I have to rehearse