It is Lee, and he is looking toward Cemetery Heights, the Mount St. Jean of the new Waterloo--on whose slopes the immense conflict is going to be decided. Lee gazes for some moments through his glasses at the long range bristling with bayonets. Not a muscle moves; he resembles a statue. Then he lowers the glasses, closes them thoughtfully, and his calm glance passes along the lines of his army. You would say that this glance penetrates the forest; that he sees his old soldiers, gay, unshrinking, unmoved by the reverses of Longstreet, and believing in themselves and in him! The blood of the soldier responds to that thought. The face of the great commander suddenly flushes. He summons a staff officer and utters a few words in calm and measured tones. The order is given. The grand assault is about to begin. That assault is going to be one of the most desperate in all history. Longstreet’s has been fierce--this will be mad and full of headlong fury. At Round Top blood flowed--here the earth is going to be soaked with it. Gettysburg is to witness a charge recalling that of the six hundred horsemen at Balaklava. Each soldier will feel that the fate of the South depends on him, perhaps. If the wedge splits the tough grain, cracking it from end to end, the axe will enter after it--the work will be finished--the red flag of the South will float in triumph over a last and decisive field. Pickett’s division of Virginia troops has been selected for the hazardous venture, and they prepare for the ordeal in the midst of a profound silence. Since the morning scarce a gunshot has been heard. Now and then only, a single cannon, like a signal-gun, sends its growl through the hills. Those two tigers, the army of Northern Virginia and the army of the Potomac, are crouching, and about to spring. At one o’clock the moment seems to have arrived. Along the whole front of Hill and Longstreet, the Southern artillery all at once bursts forth. One hundred and forty-five cannon send their threatening thunder across the peaceful valley. From Cemetery Heights eighty pieces reply to them; and for more than an hour these two hundred and twenty-five cannon tear the air with their harsh roar, hurled back in crash after crash from the rocky ramparts. That thunder is the most terrible yet heard in the war. It stirs the coolest veterans. General Hancock, the composed and unexcitable soldier, is going to say of it, “Their artillery fire was most terrific...it was the most terrific cannonade I ever witnessed, and the most prolonged.... It was a most terrific and appalling cannonade, one possibly hardly ever equalled.” For nearly two hours Lee continues this “terrific” fire. The Federal guns reply--shot and shell crossing each other; racing across the blue sky; battering the rocks; or bursting in showers of iron fragments.