Far otherwise. On Monday evening, between eight and nine, there gathered thunder over Berlin; wild tumult of the elements: thunder-bolt "thrice in swift succession" struck the unfinished Steeple; in the "hood" of which men thereupon noticed a light, as of a star, or sparkle of the sun; and straight-way, in spite of the rain-torrents, there burst out blazes of flame. Blazes unquenchable; grand yet perilous to behold. The fire-drums beat, the alarm-bells clanged, and ceased not; all Berlin struggling there, all night, in vain. Such volumes of smoke: "the heavens were black as if you had hung them with mortcloth:" such roaring cataracts of flame, "you could have picked up a copper doit at the distance of 800 yards."--"Hiss-s-s!" what hissing far aloft is that? That is the incomparable big Bells melting. There they vanish, their fine tones never to be tried more, and ooze through the red-hot ruin, "Hush-sh-sht!" the last sound heard from them. And the stem for holding that immense Crown-royal,--it is a bar and bars of iron, "weighing sixteen hundred-weight;" down it comes thundering, crashing through the belly of St. Peter's, the fall of it like an earthquake all round. And still the fire-drums beat, and from all surviving Steeples of Berlin goes the clangor of alarm; "none but the very young children can have slept that night," says our vigilant old friend. Wind was awake, too; kindling the neighboring streets;--storming towards the Powder-Magazine; where labor innumerable Artillerymen, "busy with hides from the tan-pits, with stable-dung, and other material;" speed to them, we will say! Forty dwelling-houses went; but not the Powder-Magazine; not Berlin utterly (so to speak) by the Powder-Magazine. On the morrow St. Peter's and neighborhood lay black, but still inwardly burning; not for three days more could the ruins be completely quenched. That was the news for Friedrich Wilhelm, before sunrise, on the point of his departure for Muhlberg and King August's scenic exhibitions. "HM;--but we must go, all the same! We will rebuild it!" said he.--And truly he did so. And the polite King August, sorry to hear of the Peterskirche, "gave him excellent sandstone from the quarries of Pirna," says: Fassmann: "great blocks came boating down the Elbe" from that notable Saxon Switzerland Country, notable to readers here in time coming; and are to be found, as ashlar, in the modern St. Peter's at Berlin; a fact which the reader, till Pirna be better known to him, may remember if he likes. [Fassmann, pp. 406-409.] And now let us to Radewitz without delay. Chapter III. -- CAMP OF RADEWITZ.