to it as 'The hard gale,' stating that the wind blew extremely hard from S.W. to W.N.W., but the only time mentioned is 6.30 A.M., when the small bower cable parted. In Grimsby Road the Dartmouth, after hard southerly gales, noted, ' 7 A.M., blowing excessive hard at N.W. by W.,' while the Rochester Prize gave the wind S.S.W. to N.W.; 5 A.M., wind shifted and blew a violent storm. Towards noon 'twas more moderate.'

The Deal Castle, from Archangel, had moderate and fair weather while at anchor off Scarborough throughout Friday evening, and apparently there was no anticipation of anything serious at hand, for at midnight she sat sail for Yarmouth, but soon ran into hard gales with heavy rain, and at 4 A.M. it blew very heavily; the wind directions logged for the twenty-four hours, ending at noon 27th, being S.S.W., N.W., W.N.W., and W. by S.

Thus far the main features of the cyclone on our coasts, its progress being fairly accurately determined from the time it struck the Guernsey, westward of Scilly, until it got to the North Sea. De Foe gives but little in the way of the times on land, people being in bed and too terrified to think much of the hour of the night. He gives midnight to 5 A.M. as the height of the hurricane at Helford Haven, near Falmouth; about 4 A.M. at Swansea, Chepstow, and Huntspill; a most prodigious storm for about six hours, from between 1 A.M. and 2 A.M. at Bristol; the severest blasts at Leamington between 5 A.M. and 6 A.M.; very terrible about 4 A.M. or 5 A.M. at Middleton Stony, Oxfordshire; from 5 A.M. to 6.30 A.M. in London; from 3 A.M. till nearly 7 A.M. at Upminster; and between 7 A.M. and 8 A.M. at Hull. Combining the land and sea data we see that the worst part of the tempest travelled from west to east at about fifty miles an hourthe rate of translation of the storm system and not the velocity of the wind in its mad rush round the centre.

Severe weather was experienced in France, from Rochelle to Dunkirk along the west and north coasts, and also inland and down to the south coast. Several ships were lost, but beyond the statement that Paris had a most violent Hurricane of wind,' on Saturday morning there are no particulars of direction or time. In Flanders and eastward, there was a terrible storm' on Saturday morning, causing an immense amount of destruction at Antwerp, Liege, Cologne, &c.

At Helvoetsluis an English fleet was waiting a favourable

opportunity to proceed to Spithead with Charles III. of Spain to visit Queen Anne. Here the ships reported 'extraordinary winds-S.Wly.-which put everything in confusion.' The Vigo and two transports were lost, and one hundred seamen and soldiers drowned. According to the Rochester, it blew excessive hard at S.W. by S.,' as early as 10 P.M. on the 26th, and an hour later the wind was at W., but nothing is said as to when the storm reached its climax. The Swallow recorded squalls of rain, hail, and snow on the 26th; the only mention of snow in connection with the gale. The tempest began at the Hague in the evening, the greatest violence being attained from 4 A.M. to 10 A.M., the direction south-westerly. The dykes of Friesland were broken through by the terrific seas, and a large tract of country laid under water. The Dutch-Russia fleet working down the North Sea for the Texel was 'not sensible of any storm' on Friday night. How far north the fleet was at the time is not stated.

During Saturday the tempest ravaged Holland, and on Saturday and Sunday Hanover had a dreadful storm, scarcely a house but received damage, and the country round suffered worse. Under date of December 11 (N.S.)—November 30 (O.S.)—a report from Hamburg stated that the 'Damage by a prodigious storm here and hereabouts is incredibly great,' no reference being made to the day and hour; but there is no doubt that it was the same meteor as that mentioned in a report from Copenhagen, dated the same day. We had here on the 8th Instant [November 27], at night, a violent storm of wind and rain from the S.E.,' several men-of-war running foul of one another.

So far as can be made out from the Continental accounts, the storm seems to have slowed down on Saturday while crossing the North Sea to about 40 miles an hour. We know that De Foe supposed it to have crossed the Baltic to Muscovy and Tartary, but his authorities for this would seem to be the newspaper reports. He was most probably influenced by statements from Dantzic, dated December 12 (N.S.), stating Saturday [November 27, O.S.] about Noon a most violent storm of wind, being at W.S.W., which continued about an hour and a half, and has doubtless dispersed the Swedish convoy' of twenty frigates and transports which had left the port on Friday. 'Storm has done great damage at Memel, Coningsbergh, and other places along this coast,' several ships being driven ashore or cast away. What is more likely is that this gale is identical with the one

which we have seen crossed England on the 25th, rather more than a day in advance of the Great Storm, the latter not affecting Denmark until after its predecessor had traversed the Baltic. In the absence of observations it is impossible to say what became of the historical hurricane itself. De Foe certainly pictured it as working its way round to the North Pole, and down to North America; but there is no evidence of its having been experienced to the eastward of Denmark. Knowing what we do now as to the extreme variation in the duration of storm systems, which may exist for any length of time from one day to six weeks, it would not be surprising if the cyclone which attained its maximum energy over England on that memorable night had completely exhausted itself a couple of days later. In the Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society, Vol. VII., pp. 10-19, I have described a storm of terrific violence, which caused almost incalculable damage over Western Europe, and southwards across the Mediterranean at the close of October, 1882, and yet on November 1 the storm had entirely collapsed, observations spread over the whole Continent giving no indication of its existence or of what had become of it.

Without the assistance of a network of observations, covering at least the North Atlantic and Europe, it would be idle to speculate on the birth and death of the Great Storm. There is some slight ground for supposing that it did, like some other gales, come to us from America. Apart from the views of De Foe and his numerous correspondents as to the extraordinary violence of the tempest, we have now the same fact attested by the independent testimony of scores of naval officers, who from practical experience of winds in our own and in other climes, knew what a really heavy gale meant, and we may, therefore, believe that Captain Richard Clark, of H.M.S. Newark, at anchor at Spithead, was not exaggerating when he declared that the storm of November 26-27, 1703, was the greatest ever known in England. HENRY HARRIES.

TENNYSON IN IRELAND.

A REMINISCENCE.

IT was the summer of 1878. A gale from the south-west, after breaking suddenly over the iron-bound coast of Clare, and raging against it furiously for forty-eight hours, had just died away.

Scarcely a breath of air was stirring, and the August sky was intensely blue. Yet the great Atlantic billows, gathering out of the sea distance at ever increasing intervals, still boomed and smoked against the cliffs-the last sullen thunders of ocean's retreating insurgency.

But the proverbial ill wind that had kept all but the most venturesome spirits close prisoners in the 'lodges' of Kilkee had blown the storm-loving Tennyson over from Foynes, where he and his son Hallam were the guests of Lord and Lady Monteagle.

So far back as September 1842 he had written to Aubrey de Vere from Killarney: I have been to your Ballybunion Caves, but could not get into the finest on account of the weather.' But in one of these caves, so his son now records, 'he made the following lines, which occur in "Merlin and Vivien :"

So dark a forethought rolled about his brain,

As on a dull day in an ocean cave

The blind wave feeling round his long sea-hall

In silence.'

In the year 1848 he had written to de Vere, I hear that there are larger waves at Bude than on any other part of the British coast; and I must go hither and be alone with God;' but his friend persuaded him to come to Ireland, where the waves are far higher and the cliffs often rise to 800 feet, and in one spot, Slieve League, to 2,000.

On his way to Valencia he slept at Mount Trenchard, the residence of Lord Monteagle, and, de Vere continues, I led him to the summit of Knock Patrick, the farthest spot in the south-west to which Ireland's apostle, patriarch, and patron advanced.

. . . The sunset was one of extraordinary but minatory beauty. It gave, I remember, a darksome glory to the vast and desolate expanse with all its creeks and inlets from the Shannon,

lighted the green islands in the mouth of the Fergus, and fired the ruined castle of Shanid, a stronghold of the Desmonds.

'The western clouds hung low, a mass of crimson and gold; while from the ledge of a nearer one, down plunged a glittering flood empurpled like wine. The scene was a thoroughly Irish one, and gave a stormy welcome to the Sassenach bard. The next morning he pursued his way alone to Valencia. He soon wrote that he had enjoyed it. He had found there the highest waves that Ireland knows, cliffs that at one spot rise to the height of 600 feet, tamarisks and fuchsias that no sea-winds can intimidate, and the old "Knight of Kerry," as chivalrous a representative of Desmond's great Norman House as it had ever put forth.'

And now, a generation afterwards, and having found his full fame in the interval, Tennyson was paying his third and last visit to Ireland, and again revisiting Kilkee by the great deeps,' for a letter from him to de Vere in October 1848 containing this phrase seems to show he had visited the spot in the previous summer, when the guest of his brother poet at Curragh Chase.

'I am glad,' he writes, 'that you have thought of me at Kilkee by the great deeps. The sea is my delight.'

The intelligence of Tennyson's arrival at Moore's Hotel had spread rapidly, and on the splendid forenoon in question it was very noticeable what a number of the Laureate's slim green volumes were in evidence on the terraces and up the cliff side in the hands which had been swinging a racquet in the fine weather of a few days before.

‘These Limerick girls,' remarked a local wit, 'are growing more fickle than ever. Yesterday they had lawn-tennis on. To-day they have Alfred Tennyson.'

Bathing had been out of the question for a couple of days, so it was with a keen sense of exhilaration that I, a visitor to Kilkee at the time, again found myself on the Duggena spring-board. I plunged, and was in mid career, when, rounding a reef corner, I all but knocked heads with another swimmer.

'Beg your pardon, sir!'

'Not at all, sir! but yes! What! You here? Why, how long have you been in these parts?'

About ten days, J. G.!'

'Very odd we've not met before, then?'

'Not at all. I've been purposely avoiding you.'

'That doesn't sound very friendly.'