King's feeling on that subject than we quite suppose. It seems
the King had heard that the Berlin people were talking and rumoring
of "a War being just at hand;" whereupon--"MARCH 5th, 1767, IN THE
VOSSISCHE ZEITUNG (Voss's Chronicle), No. 28," an inquisitive Berlin
public read as follows:--

"We are advised from Potsdam, that, on the 27th of February, towards
evening, the sky began to get overcast; black clouds, presaging a
tempest of unexampled fury, covered all the horizon: the thunder, with
its lightnings, forked bolts of amazing brilliancy, burst out; and,
under its redoubled peals, there descended such a torrent of hail as
within man's memory had not been seen. Of two bullocks yoked in their
plough, with which a peasant was hastening home, one was struck on the
head by a piece of it, and killed outright. Many of the common people
were wounded in the streets; a brewer had his arm broken. Roofs are
destroyed by the weight of this hail; all the windows that looked
windward while it fell were broken. In the streets, hailstones were
found of the size of pumpkins (CITROUILLES), which had not quite melted
two hours after the storm ceased. This singular phenomenon has made a
very great impression. Scientific people say, the air had not buoyancy
enough to support these solid masses when congealed to ice; that
the small hailstones in these clouds getting so lashed about in the
impetuosity of the winds, had united the more the farther they fell,
and had not acquired that enormous magnitude till comparatively near the
earth. Whatever way it may have happened, it is certain that occurrences
of that kind are rare, and almost without example." [VOSSISCHE ZEITUNG,
ubi supra: _OEuvres de Frederic,_ xv. 204.]

Another singularity is, "Professor Johann Daniel Titius of Wittenberg,"
who teaches NATURAL PHILOSOPHY in that famous University, one may
judge with what effect, wrote a Monograph on this unusual Phenomenon!
[Rodenbeck (ii. 285) gives the Title of it, "CONSIDERATIONS ON THE
POTSDAM HAIL OF LAST YEAR (Wittenberg, 1768)."]

CONFEDERATION OF BAR ENSUES, ON THE PER-CONTRA SIDE (March 28th,
1768); AND, AS FIRST RESULT OF ITS ACHIEVEMENTS (October 6th, 1768), A
TURK-RUSSIAN WAR.

The Confederation of Radom, and its victorious Diet, had hardly begun
their Song of Triumph, when there ensued on the per-contra side a
flaming CONFEDERATION OF BAR;--which, by successive stages, does at
last burn out the Anarchies of Poland, and