The news is bad indeed! Berlin taken by capitulation, and yet the Austrians behaved so savagely that even Russians felt delicacy, were shocked, and checked them! Nearer home, the hereditary prince has been much beaten by Monsieur de Castries, and forced to raise the siege of Wesel, whither Prince Ferdinand had sent him most unadvisedly: we have scarce an officer unwounded. The secret expedition will now, I conclude, sail, to give an _eclat_ to the new reign. Lord Albemarle does not command it, as I told you, nor Mr. Conway, tho both applied. Nothing is settled about the Parliament; not even the necessary changes in the Household. Committees of council are regulating the mourning and the funeral. The town, which between armies, militia, and approaching elections, was likely to be a desert all the winter, is filled in a minute, but everything is in the deepest tranquillity. People stare; the only expression. The moment anything is declared, one shall not perceive the novelty of the reign. A nation without parties is soon a nation without curiosity. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 42: From the "Anecdotes of Painting in England."] [Footnote 43: Letter dated "Strawberry Hill, August 3, 1775."] [Footnote 44: Letter to Sir Horace Mann, dated "Arlington Street, October 28, 1760."] GILBERT WHITE Born in 1720, died in 1793; educated at Oxford and became a fellow of Oriel; later made curate at Selborne; his "Natural History of Selborne," published in 1789. THE CHIMNEY-SWALLOW[45] The house-swallow, or chimney-swallow, is undoubtedly the first comer of all the British _hirundines_; and appears in general on or about the 13th of April, as I have remarked from many years' observation. Not but now and then a straggler is seen much earlier: and in particular, when I was a boy I observed a swallow for a whole day together on a sunny warm Shrove Tuesday; which day could not fall out later than the middle of March, and often happened early in February. It is worth remarking that these birds are seen first about lakes and mill-ponds; and it is also very particular, that if these early visitors happen to find frost and snow, as was the case in the two dreadful springs of 1770 and 1771, they immediately withdraw for a time. A circumstance this, much more in favor of hiding than migration; since it is much more probable that a bird should retire to its hybernaculum just at hand, than return for a week or two to warmer latitudes. The swallow, tho called the chimney-swallow, by no means builds altogether in chimneys, but often within barns and outhouses against the rafters; and so she did in Virgil's time: "Garrula quam tignis nidos suspendat hirundo" (the twittering swallow hangs its nest from the beams).