"May be," thinks Hotham, "that the Court of Vienna throws out this bait to continue the King's delusion,"-- or a snuffle from Seckendorf, without the Court, may have given it currency in so inane an element as Radewitz.
Of the terrific Sham-Battles, conducted by Weissenfels on one side and Wackerbarth on the other; of the charges of cavalry, play of artillery, threatening to end in a very doomsday, round the Pavilion and the Ladies and the Royalties assembled on the balconies there (who always go to dinner safe, when victory has declared itself), I shall say nothing.

Nor of that supreme "attack on the intrenchments:" blowing-up of the very Bridges; cavalry posted in the woods; host doing its very uttermost against host, with unheard-of expenditure of gunpowder and learned manoeuvre; in which "the Fleet" (of shallops on the Elbe, rigged mostly in silk) took part, and the Bucentaur with all its cannon.

Words fail on such occasions.

I will mention only that assiduous King August had arranged everything like the King of Playhouse-Managers; was seen, early in the morning, "driving his own curricle" all about, in vigilant supervision and inspection; crossed the Tub-bridge, or perhaps the Float-bridge (not yet blown up), "in a WURSTWAGEN;" giving himself (what proved well founded) the assurance of success for this great day;--and finally that, on the morrow, there occurred an illumination and display of fire-works, the like of which is probably still a desideratum.
For the Bucentaur and Fleet were all hung with colored lamplets; Headquarters (HAUPT-LAGER) and Army-LAGER ditto ditto; gleaming upwards with their golden light into the silver of the Summer Twilight:--and all this is still nothing to the scene there is across the Elbe, on our southeast corner.

You behold that Palace of the Genii; wings, turrets, mainbody, battlements: it is "a gigantic wooden frame, on which two hundred carpenters have been busy for above six months," ever since Christmas last.