Soft sloping ground, with Russians simmering ahead of you, all the way down to Kunersdorf, a mile long: by horizontal pointing, you had such reboundings (RICOCHETS); and carried beautiful execution! Tempelhof soon spent his hundred shots: but it was not at once that any of our sixty heavy guns could be got up thither.

Twelve horses to each: fancy it, and what baffling delays here and elsewhere;--and how the Russian whirlpool was settling more and more, in the interim! And had, in part, settled; in part, got through to the rear, and been replaced by fresh troops! Friedrich's activities, and suppressed and insuppressible impatiences in this interval, are also conceivable, though not on record for us.

The swiftest of men; tied down, in this manner, with the blaze of perfect victory ahead, were the moments NOT running out! Slower or faster, he thinks (I suppose), the victory is his; and that he must possess his soul till things do arrive.

It was in one and more of those embargoed intervals that he wrote to Berlin [Preuss, ii.

212 n.] (which is waiting, as if for life or death, the issue of this scene, sixty miles distant): "Russians beaten; rejoice with me!" Four successive couriers, I believe, with messages to that effect; and at last a Fifth with dolefully contrary news!-- In proportion as the cannon and other necessaries gradually got in, the Fight flamed up from its embers more and more: and there ensued,--the Russians being now ranked again (fronting eastward now) "in many lines," and very fierce,--a second still deadlier bout; Friedrich furiously diligent on their front and right flank; Finck, from the Alder Waste, battering and charging (uphill, and under difficulties from those Flosses and single Bridges) on their left flank.