as a general, was tenacious and revengeful; and learning of Sheridan's absence, and having received still further re-enforcements, he resolved once more to attempt the destruction of the Union army. He determined, by a nocturnal movement, attended with such imminent hazard that it could only have been prompted by desperation, to turn the left flank of the Army of the Shenandoah. To do this, it was necessary that he should pass with about one-half of his army along a gorge, very near, in some places not more than four hundred yards distant from, the Union troops. Discovery at any point of this advance would have been his utter ruin. He accomplished it, however, without detection, and at dawn struck the left flank, and poured a destructive fire into it; his own right, meanwhile, pushing on, and outflanking the Union troops more completely at every step. The Eighth Corps (Crook's) were taken completely by surprise, and, after some ineffectual resistance, compelled to fall back, losing heavily in wounded and prisoners; the Nineteenth Corps (Emory's), in its turn, was also flanked and forced back; and the Sixth, after a somewhat longer struggle, found itself compelled to retreat.

The Army of the Shenandoah had thus been driven back, with heavy loss, about three miles, and forced off the turnpike, while the stragglers were scattered all the way toward Winchester, twelve miles distant, when, about two o'clock, Sheridan, who was on his return from Washington, and had reached Winchester the night before, came up the pike at full speed, his noble horse completely flecked with foam, swinging his cap, and shouting to the stragglers, "Face the other way, boys! We are going back to our camps! We are going to lick them out of their boots!" The effect was magical. The wounded by the roadside raised their voices to shout; the fugitives, but now hurrying forward to Winchester, turned about, at sight of him who had always led them to victory, and followed him back to the battle-ground as hounds follow their master.

Still riding rapidly, he reached the main army, ordered it to face about, form line, and advance to the position it had last quitted. He was obeyed without hesitation, and for two hours he rode along the lines, studying the ground and encouraging the men. Boys," he said, in his earnest, animated way, "if I had been here, this never should have happened! I tell you, it never should have happened! And now we are going back to our camps. We are going to get a twist on them-we are going to lick them out of their boots!"

Forming his troops in a good position, and ordering the erection of rude temporary breast works, which were thrown up in an incredibly short time, he notified the Nineteenth Corps that the enemy were advancing against them in column. They came, and were received with so deadly a fire of artillery and musketry,

that they awaited no second volley, but fell back out of sight. At half-past three, Sheridan ordered an advance along the whole line, and swung his right (the Nineteenth Corps) around upon the left, so as to flank the enemy, and push them off the crests on to the turnpike and the Middletown Meadows, where he could hurl his cavalry upon them. The movement was successful; and though at first Early's troops held their position with great tenacity, yet under Sheridan's own eye the Union troops, who had neither eaten nor drunk since the previous day, and in the morning had retreated, forgetting their hunger and thirst, forgetting every thing except that they were Sheridan's soldiers, fought like tigers, and drove the enemy back, forcing his first line, carrying his second with a charge which swept all before it, pushed his columns into confusion, and, in spite of the frantic efforts of Early and his officers, sent his utterly routed legions again on their travels up the valley; while the cavalry, taking up the pursuit, pushed them through Strasburg, past Fisher's Hill, and on to Woodstock, sixteen miles distant, abandoning their cannon, small-arms, clothing, every thing, in their mad haste to shake off their pursuers. Forty-nine cannon, fifty wagons, sixty-five ambulances, sixteen hundred small-arms, and fifteen hundred prisoners, were the trophies of this victory. Battles have been lost and won on the same day before now, but in all the cases on record, the retrieval of the misfortune was due to the arrival of re-enforcements at a critical moment; but here, the only re-enforcement which the Army of the Shenandoah received or needed to recover its lost field of battle, camps, intrenchments, and cannon, was one man-Sheridan. Well might the Lieutenant-General, ever prompt to notice a gallant action, say of this battle, "It stamps Sheridan, what I have always thought him, one of the ablest of generals."

As an evidence of the appreciation of his extraordinary abil ity in this and other engagements, General Sheridan was, upon the resignation of General McClellan, on the 8th of November, promoted to fill the vacancy as major-general in the regular Army.

Six weeks after this battle, the Sixth Army Corps returned to the Army of the Potomac; and Early, hopelessly disabled, did not again venture far down the valley. Late in February, 1865, General Sheridan, with his cavalry force of about fifteen thousand men, the finest single body of mounted troops ever assembled on this continent, moved up the Shenandoah Valley, captured Staunton, attacked Early near Waynesboro, and completely annihilated the small remnant of his army, taking thirteen hundred prisoners, and narrowly missing the general himself; and thence moving southeastward, destroyed the Lynchburg and Virginia Central Railroad for nearly thirty miles, and the James River Canal for fifteen or twenty, com

pletely destroying its locks, and breaking its banks beyond the possibility of repair for months, thus cutting off the channels of supply for Lee's army at Richmond, and inflicting injury, to the value of more than fifty millions of dollars, upon rebel property: this accomplished, he marched to White House, and thence crossing the James River, on a pontoon-bridge, on the 27th of March, joined Grant's army.

On the 29th of March, with his cavalry and the Fifth Army Corps, he moved towards Dinwiddie Court-House, threatening, at the same time, the Southside Railroad in the direction of Burkesville. After three days of continuous fighting, culminating on Saturday, April 1st, in the battle of Five Forks, he succeeded in flanking Lee's army, and obtaining possession of the Southside Railroad; the remainder of the Army of the Potomac and the Army of the James engaging, at the same time, the centre and left of the rebel army. The fighting was continued, though more feebly, on Sunday, April 2d; but on Sunday night both Petersburg and Richmond were evacuated, General Lee and his army attempting to escape to Danville. The pursuit was continued with unrelenting activity, Sheridan being always in the advance. On the 6th of April, Sheridan attacked Lee's forces at Deatonville, near Amelia Court-House, and defeated them with great slaughter, capturing LieutenantGeneral Ewell and six other generals, and about ten thousand prisoners. On the 8th of April, he brought them to a stand again at Farnville, where, after a brief fight, Lee requested a cessation of hostilities, and the following day, April 9th, surrendered his entire army to General Grant. Such has been the military career of "Little Phil.," as his soldiers affectionately call him. Daring, yet cautious; bold, but not rash; fertile in resources, and knowing no fear, he has never yet lost a battle, or rested satisfied with an indecisive one.

THE rain dripped down the back of our necks.

When I have said that, I have described the most disagreeable of the little miseries that render life intolerable.

I have missed express trains; I have caught accommodation

trains; I have visited insane asylums; I have dined in the country, green in my imagination with fresh fruits and vegetables, upon salt pork and beans and geoponic pies; I have got into a Broadway stage and found my pocket-book left in my other trousers; I have been sea-sick! I have ridden to Harlem in the Third Avenue cars; I have waited "just a minute" while a friend played six or seven games of billiards; I have waited dinner, hungry nigh unto starvation, while my wife finished dressing; I have had my pocket picked; my trunk has been sent to Montreal when I had stopped at Saratoga; I have been in Washington during a dust-storm, and slipped up in Broadway during the muddy season; tall parties have sat in front of me at the theatre, and dexterously wriggled about so as to shut off all the funny parts from my anxious gaze; once I ate a green persimmon; often have my teeth sunk into a w-y chestnut. But what is any one of these things, what all combined, compared with the drip, drip, drip, of a cold rain macerating the back of your neck? Ugh! At most miseries you can grin, and bear them; but if that man lives who can grin with the back of his neck cold and wet-but pshaw! The pachyderm is impossible!

Drizzly over head, soggy all about you, slushy under foot; with wet knees and saturated boots, dampening a damp saddle, you flounder on a steaming horse, shiny and trickling, slop, keslip, keslip keslop, slip slop, slop slop, slip keslop, slop slop slop; and hoosh, serlush, che-wallop, che-bouk, ker-slussssh, gallops up behind you in mad haste one of those aides-de-camp that flourish at head-quarters and sends bucketfuls of the nasty mess of mud into your face and eyes and ears. "Damned Dutchman!" you think, perhaps shriek, according to your rank or irascibility, for all bulgers are Dutchmen to the army mind. You have scarcely time to scoop the mud out of your blinded eyes and smear the surplus alluvion from your mustache, before another great floundering in the sea of mud heralds the approach of the General himself, mounted on a clay horse which cleaves the mud right and left at a swinging trot, followed by an enormous staff coated with mud, tearing along at a full gallop, with a couple of score of mad orderlies racing after these last like mad demons, head down and hand on cap, their poor jaded, soaked beasts, ploughing like so many low-pressure engines. Out of the way, you infantry, up the hillside, behind the trees, into the ditch, into the swamp, for your lives! Clear the track, you artillery, while horses plunge and kick and twist your trace-chains! 'Way to the right, you cavalry! Hoi! hoi! everybody; get out of the way, and curse!

Tantaran-tra-ra-ra, sounds the bugle as a signal to the dirty, tired, wet column, to halt in the mud. Toot-tetootee-toot-tetootee-toot-tetootee-toot, it blows, for "column forward," and on

we splash again. The halt and forward sound alternately through the long day as the long wagon-train strings out or closes up, until we think the bugle possessed of a devil. Night falls upon the column still in march, and darkness sits atop our other woes innumerable, the chief whereof is universal wetness. The head-quarters fires blaze up joyously as we toil wearily past the big camp, and the head-quarters bugles snore out a comfortable tattoo, driving us nervous ones to desperation. For what know we now of the night-long labor, the incessant toil, the sleepless responsibility, that fret away the brains of officers, behind those glowing guard-fires, despite that snoring tattoo? Later we found out many other things than luxurious ease under the head-quarters canvas, but to-night felt only tired, miserable, and wet, and indisposed to justice, or indeed any thing but getting into camp and to sleep. At length the column files right and halts in a ploughed stubble-field, with a plentiful garnish of stumps; the brigade forms into line; the regiments break into column by division; arms are stacked; ranks broken; the company officers and the men pitch their shelter-tents; the mounted officers hold their dripping horses till their sleepy, moist contrabands stumble up and relieve them, when they, too, seek shelter in the staff tents, there to flop themselves down on their rubber blankets, and wait, achingly, for supper. Finally, after much hacking and pulling and tearing down of wet fence-rails and picking up of stray logs, the fires blaze merrily, flaring up saucily, full in the face of the sulky Night, and setting even its sullenness aglow, in spite of itself; the inevitable frying-pan sizzles away, very much in earnest, suggestive enough of fried bacon and, after, dyspepsia, if we thought of afterward; and mingling with the savory odor of the fry puffs up the welcome aroma of the soldier's boon companion, coffee. "Supper ready, sah," grins the shiny contraband, leaning his unctuous cheek against the tent-pole, whereat a gleam of joy shoots through the damp and penetrates five human hearts beating under that canvas. Such is the general satisfaction, that even the melancholy Smallweed relaxes so far as only to vent a "Why the devil don't you bring it in, then?" at the head of the smiling African, punctuated by a slice of wet sole just torn from an unfortunate boot. The wool-topped disappears suddenly, in a streak of chuckles, but resently } returns, grinning more than ever, bearing a greasy board, part of some abominable patent mess-chest, laden with a steaming freight. We are gastric enough by this time to gulp down in silence, or between spluttering sentences spoken with full mouths, unutterable quantities of coffee, fried grease (bacon, by brevet), soaked hard-tack, hard hard-tack, all except the latter boiling hot, and to our ravenous emptiness exceeding in savor all the delicacies of Delmonico. And from this luxurious repast it is an easy task for all except the poor Adjutant to turn

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