It is idle to criticise arrangements now--it is so easy to be wise after a matter is over--but the reader will hardly fail to observe the essential defects of such disposition of troops for a great battle. Nearly four miles intervened between the different parts of Sherman's Division. Of course to command the one, he must neglect the other. McClernand's lay partially behind Sherman, and therefore, not stretching far enough to the left, there was a gap between him and Prentiss, which the Rebels did not fail speedily to find. Our extreme left was commanded by unguarded heights, easily approachable from Corinth. And the whole arrangement was confused and ill-adjusted. Confusion was not the only glaring fault. General Sherman's camps, to the right of the little log-cabin called Shiloh Church, fronted on a descending slope of a quarter to a half mile in breadth, mostly covered with woods and bounded by a ravine. A day's work of his troops would have covered that slope with an impenetrable abattis, thrown a line of breastworks to the front of the camps, and enabled General Sherman to sweep all approaches with artillery and musketry, and hold his position against any force that was brought against it. But for three weeks he had lain there, declaring the position dangerous, and predicting attack; yet absolutely without making the slightest preparation for the commonest means of defense. During Friday and Saturday the Rebels had marched out of Corinth, about sixty thousand strong, in three great divisions. Sidney Johnston had general command of the whole army. Beauregard had the centre; Braxton Bragg and Hardee the wings. Polk, Breckinridge, Cheatham and others held subordinate commands. On Thursday Johnston issued a proclamation to the army, announcing to them in grandiloquent terms that he was about to lead them against the invaders, and that they would soon celebrate the great decisive victory of the war, in which they had repelled the invading column, redeemed Tennessee, and preserved the Southern Confederacy. Their general plan of attack is said by prisoners to have been to strike our centre first, (composed, as the reader will remember, of Prentiss's and McClernand's Divisions,) pierce the centre, and then pour in their troops to attack on each side the wings into which they would thus cut our army. To accomplish this, they should have struck the left of the three brigades of Sherman's Division which lay on our right and the left of McClernand's, which came to the front on Sherman's left. By some mistake, however, they struck Sherman's left alone, and that a few moments after a portion of their right wing had swept up against Prentiss. The troops thus attacked, by six o'clock, or before it, were as follows: The left of Sherman's Brigades, that of Colonel Hildebrand, was composed of the Fifty-ninth Ohio, Colonel Pfyffe; Seventy-seventh Ohio, Lieutenant-Colonel commanding Fifty-third Ohio, Colonel Appler, and Fifty-third Illinois.