Page:A tour through the northern counties of England, and the borders of Scotland - Volume II.djvu/22

 Excellent, however, as the husbandry of Nor thumberland may be, the produce is by no means equivalent to the skill and care of the farmer; the soil being for the most part poor and shallow, the air cold, and the climate ungenial. Heavy fogs and boisterous winds frequently disfigure the face of the sky. Capricious as the weather of our island in general is, yet in Northumberland it seems to wear a peculiar inconstancy. Amongst other inconveniences, that deformed child of the ocean, called there the sea-fret; may perhaps be reckoned the most disagreeable; a thick and heavy mist, generated on the ocean, rolling from that grand reservoir of atmospheric discomforts—the East, and deforming the fair face of a day smiling perhaps in sunshine, with a mantle of mist, dark, damp, and chilling; starving the body with its penetrating cold, and shedding a baneful influence on the spirits of those who are unaccustomed to the Boeotian atmosphere. The uncomfortable sensations which it produced in us, brought to my recollection a similar phenomenon and its effects, proceeding from the same quarter, experienced at Barcelona, the only inconvenience of that delightful climate; where this sea-born monster is seen hovering over the waves for three or four days, approaching to and receding from the shore alternately as if to sport with the terrors of the