Postdam, a town of Germany, in the circle of Upper Saxony, with a palace, belonging to the king of Prussia. It is seated in an island ten miles in circumference, formed by the rivers Spree and Havel. The palace is very curious, and finely built upon a delightful spot 12 miles west of Berlin. E. Long. 13° 42' N. Lat. 52° 34'. Reitbeck in his travels informs us, that the houses of Potsdam are still finer than those of Berlin; but like them they are inhabited only by persons of the lower and middling ranks.

Pott (Percival), was born in London in 1713. He received the first rudiments of his education at a private school at Dart in Kent; and became an apprentice to Mr. Nourse, one of the surgeons of St Bartholomew's hospital; of which hospital, in 1744-5, he was elected an assistant surgeon, and in 1749 appointed one of the principal surgeons. In 1746, he married the daughter of Robert Cruttenden, Esq. His first publication is said to have been planned in 1756, during his confinement in consequence of a compound fracture of the leg: from that time, his pen was seldom long unemployed. His practice and his reputation were now rapidly increasing: in 1764, he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society; and afterward was complimented with honorary diplomas from the Royal Colleges of Surgeons at Edinburgh and in Ireland. In 1787, he resigned the office of surgeon to St Bartholomew's hospital, "after having served it (as he used to say), man and boy, half a century;" and on the 22d of December 1788, after an illness of eight days, he expired.

"The labours of the greatest part of his life (says Mr. Earle, who published his Chirurgical works), were without relaxation; an increasing family required his utmost exertion: of late years he had a villa at Neapden; and in the autumn usually passed a month at Bath, or at the sea-side. Thus, though he gathered, as he expressed it, some of the fruit of the garden which he had planted as he went along, and always lived in a generous and hospitable manner, at the same time bestowing on four sons and four daughters a liberal and necessarily expensive education, and applying large sums to their establishment during his lifetime, he left an ample provision for them at his decease. Among his papers was found, what he had often mentioned, a small box, containing a few pieces of money, being the whole which he ever received from the wreck of his father's fortune. With this was deposited an exact account of every individual fee which a long life of business had produced—abundant evidence of well-spent time, and the industrious application of abilities, to which the res angusta domi, at the commencement, probably acted more powerfully as an incentive than as an obstacle."

Potter (Christopher), a learned English divine, was born in 1591, and bred at Oxford. In 1633, he published his "Answer to a late Popish Plot," intitled Charity mistaken, which he wrote by special order of King Charles I., whose chaplain he was. In 1634, he was promoted to the deanery of Worcester; and, in 1640, was constituted vice-chancellor of the university of Oxford, in the execution of which office he met with some trouble from the members of the long parliament. Upon breaking out of the civil wars, he sent all his plate to the king, declaring, "that he would rather, like Diogenes, drink in the hollow of his hand, than that his majesty should want;" and he afterwards suffered much for the royal cause. In consideration of this he was nominated to the deanery of Durham in 1646, but was prevented from being installed by his death, which happened about two months after. He was a person learned and religious, exemplary in his conversation, courteous in his carriage, of a sweet and obliging nature, and of a comely presence. He was remarkable in his charity to the poor.

Potter (Dr John), archbishop of Canterbury, was the son of a linen-draper at Wakefield in Yorkshire, where he was born about the year 1674. He studied at University college, Oxford; and in 1691 published Variantes lectionis & nota ad Plutarchi librum de audientia poetica; & ad Basilii magni orationem ad juvenes, quomodo cum fructu legere possint Graecorum libros, 8vo, 1693. In 1697, came out his edition of Lycephron, in folio; which is reckoned the best of that obscure writer: soon after, he published his Antiquities of Greece, 2 vols 8vo. These works established his literary reputation, and engaged him in a correspondence with Gravius and other learned foreigners. In 1706, he was made chaplain to the queen; in 1715, bishop of Oxford; and in 1737, he succeeded archbishop Wake in the see of Canterbury; which high station he supported with much dignity until his death in 1747. He was a learned and exemplary churchman; but not of an amiable disposition, being but too strongly tinctured with the pride of office; nor is it to his credit that he disdained his eldest son for marrying below his rank in life. His "Theological works, containing sermons, charges, discourses on church-government, and divinity lectures," were printed at Oxford, in 3 vols, 8vo, 1753.