23d June 1767-5th March 1768.

Radzivil; Diet, after adjournments, after one long adjournment, disappeared, 5th March 1768; and of work mentionable it had done this of the Dissidents only. That of contributing to 'the 'sovereign contempt with which King Stanislaus is regarded by 'all ranks of men,' is hardly to be called peculiar work or peculiarly mentionable.

At this point, to relieve the reader's mind, and, at any rate, as the date is fully come, we will introduce a small Newspaper Article from a very high hand, little guessed till long afterwards as the writer,—namely, from King Friedrich's own. It does not touch on the Dissident Question, or the Polish troubles; but does, in a back-handed way, on Prussian Rumours rising about them; and may obliquely show more of the King's feeling on that subject than we quite suppose. It seems the King had heard that the Berlin people were talking and rumouring 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

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'further they fell, and had not acquired that enormous magni'tude 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.'33

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 !34

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 reduce them to ashes. Confederation of Bar; and then, as progeny of that, for and against, such a brood of Confederations, orthodox, heterodox, big, little, short-lived, long-lived, of all complexions, and degrees of noisy fury, potent, at any rate, each of them for murder and arson, within a certain radius, as the Earth never saw before. Now was the time of those inextricable marchings (as inroads and outroads) through the Lithuanian Bogs, of those death-defiant, unparalleled exploits, skirmishings, scaladings, riding by the edge of precipices, of Pulawski, Potocki, and others,-in which Rulhière loses himself and turns on his axis, amid impatient readers.

For the Russian troops (summoned by a trembling Stanislaus and his Senate, in terms of Treaty 1764), and in more languid manner, the Stanislaus soldiery, as per law of the case, proceeded to strike in,—generally, my impression was, with an eye to maintain the King's Peace and keep down murder and arson :—and sure enough, the small bodies of drilled Russians blew an infuriated orthodox Polack chivalry to right and left at a short notice; but as to the Constable's Peace or King's, 33 Vossische Zeitung, ubi suprà; Œuvres de Frédéric, xv. 204.

34 Rödenbeck (ii. 285) gives the Title of it,' Considerations on the Pots-` dam Hail of Last Year (Wittenburg, 1768).'

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made no improvement upon that, far the reverse. It is certain the Confederate chivalry were driven about, at a terrible rate,over the Turk frontier for shelter; began to appeal to the Grand Turk, in desperate terms: "Brother of the Sun and Moon, saw you ever such a chance for finishing Russia? Polack chivalry is Orthodox, but also it is Anti-Russian!" The Turk beginning to give ear to it, made the matter pressing and serious. Here, more specifically, are some features and successive phases,—unless the reader prefer to skip.

Bar, March 1768. The Confederation of Radom, as efficient preliminary, and chief agent in that Diet of emancipation to the Dissident human mind, might long have been famous over Poland and the world; but there instantly followed as corollary to it a Confederation of Bar, which quite dimmed the fame of Radom, and indeed of all Confederations prior or posterior! As the Confederation of Bar and its Doings, or rather sufferings and tragical misdoings and undoings, still hang like fitful spectralities, or historical shadows, of a vague ghastly complexion, in the human memory, one asks at least: Since they were on this Planet, tell us where? Bar is in the Waiwodship Podol (what we call Podolia), some 400 miles south-east of Warsaw; not far from the Dniester River:-not very far from that mystery of the Dniester, the Zaporavian Cossacks,-from those rapids or cataracts (quasi-cataracts of the Dniester, with Islands in them, where those Cossack robbers live unassailable):―across the Dniester lies Turkey, and its famed Fortress of Choczim. This is a commodious station for Polish Gentlemen intending mutiny by law.

March 8th, 1768, Three short days after the Diet had done its fine feat, and retired to privacy, news come to Warsaw, That Podolia and the Southern parts are all up, confederating with the highest animation; in hot rage against such decision of a Diet, contrary to Holy Religion and to much else; and that the said decision will have to fight for itself, now that it has done voting. This interesting news is true; and goes on intensifying and enlarging itself, one dreadful Confederation springing up, and then another and ever another, day after day; till at last we hear that on the 27th of the month, March 27th, 1768, at Bar,

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a little Town on the Southern or Turkish Frontier, all these more or less dreadful Confederations have met by delegates, and coalesced into one "Confederation of Bar,"-which did surely prove dreadful enough, to itself especially, in the months now ensuing!

No history of Bar Confederation shall we dream of; far be such an attempt from us. It consists of many Confederations, and out of each, pro and contra, spring many. Like the Lernean Hydra, or even Hydras in a plural condition. A many-headed dog: and how many whelps it had,—I cannot give even the cipher of them, or I would! One whelp Confederation, that of Cracow, is distinguished by having frequently or generally been "drunk;" and of course its procedures had often a vinous character.35 I fancy to have read somewhere that the number of them was one hundred and twenty-five. The rumour and the furious barking of Bar and its whelps goes into all lands: such rabid loud baying at mankind and the moon; and then, under Russia's treatment, such shrill yelping and shrieking, was not heard in the world before, though perhaps it has since.

Poor Bar's exploits in the fighting way were highly inconsiderable; all on the same scale; and spread over such a surface of country, mostly unknown, as renders it impossible to give them head-room, were you never so unfurnished. They can be read in eloquent Rulhière; but by no mortal held in memory. Anarchy is not a thing to be written of: a Lernean Hydra, several Lernean Hydras, in chaotic genesis, getting their heads lopped off, and at the same time sprouting new ones in such ratio, where is the Zoologist that will give account of it? There was not anything considerable of fighting; but of bullying, plundering, murdering and being murdered, a frightful amount. There are seizures of castles, convents, defensible houses; marches at a rate like that of antelopes, through the Lithuanian parts, boggy, hungry, boundless, opening to the fancy the Infinitude of Peat, in the solid and the fluid state. This, perhaps, is the finest species of feats, though they never lead to anything. There are heroes famed for these marches.

35 In Hermann (v. 431-448); and especially in Rulhière (ii. livre 8 et seq.), details in superabundance.

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The Pulawskis, for example,-four of them, Lawyer people, -showed much activity, and a talent for impromptu soldiering, in that, kind. The Magnates of the Confederation, I was surprised to learn, had all quitted it, the instant it came to strokes : "You Lawyer people, with your priests and orthodox peasantries, you do the fighting part; ours is the consulting!" And except Potocki (and he worse than none), there is presently not a Magnate of them left in Poland,-the rest all gone across the Austrian Border, to Teschen, to Bilitz, a handy little town and domain in that Duchy of Teschen ;—and sit there as "Committee of Government:" much at their ease in comparison, could they but agree among themselves, which they cannot. Bilitz is one of the many domains of Magnate Sulkowski:-do readers recollect the Sulkowski who at one time "declared War" on King Friedrich; and was picked up, both War and he, so compendiously by General Goltz, and locked in Glogau to cool? This is the same Sulkowski; much concerned now in these matters; a rich Magnate, glad to see his friends about him as Governing Committee; but gets, and gives, a great deal of vexation in it, the element proving again too hot!—

I said there were four famed Pulawskis;36 a father, once Advocate in Warsaw, with three sons and a nephew; who, though extremely active people, could do no good whatever. The father Pulawski had the fine idea of introducing the British Constitution; clothing Poland wholly in British tailorage, and so making it a new Poland: but he never could get it done. This poor gentleman died in Turkish prison, flung into jail at Constantinople, on calumnious accusation and contrivance by a rival countryman; his sons and nephew, poor fellows, all had their fame, more or less, in the Cause of Freedom so-called; but no other profit in this world, that I could hear of. Casimir, the eldest son, went to America; died there, still in the Cause of Freedom so-called; Fort Pulawski, in the Harbour of Charleston (which is at present, on very singular terms, reengaged in the same so-called Cause!), was named in memory of this Casimir. He had defended Czenstochow (if anybody knew what Czenstochow was, or could find it in the Polish map);

36 Hermann, v. 465.