Strangely, although it is an international cliché that the British are obsessed with the weather, it is a fixation with minor irritations: will rain spoil the wedding, the Test Match, the bank holiday?

...the vehicle is plodding prose, but the effect is none the less poignant. And in regard to this I may say that in a hundred places in Trollope the extremity of pathos is reached by the homeliest means.

The outbreak [of potato blight] in Ireland was part of a pandemic—that is, the disease suddenly became widespread and destructive almost simultaneously in several European countries and in the United States as well. … [T]he pathogen increased and became widely distributed, so that when the weather became generally and extremely favorable, as happened during the years of the pandemic, it could attack rapidly and in force over a wide area at once.

A chamber lamp burned in the fire place: by this light, as he leaned against the feet of the bed, he perceived his uncle slept.