On the 23d, after night had fallen, the Second Division, Ninth army corps, (Gen. Hartraupt), was attacked and forced to fall back through that part of the town lying north of the railroad. In this retreat, houses that were occupied, or in danger of being so, by Confederate sharp-shooters, were set on fire and burned. For that purpose the Federal troops made some gallant sorties. Among the buildings destroyed in the course of the general battling in that quarter, were dwellings of citizens. In a few instances families were able to save some of their household goods, to which work officers and men contributed help when it was possible, but on the night of the 23d, little or nothing could be done in that way. The railroad machine shops, numbering eighteen or twenty buildings, and a former Confederate arsenal containing a large quantity of war material, shared in the conflagration. The flames that with crackling noise wrapped many houses in their glowing arms, the billows of smoke brightly spotted with huge sparks and burning fragments of wood, the crash of breaking timbers and falling roofs, the explosion of shells in the arsenal, the firing of guns by the contending armies which the light of the flames made conspicuous, and their defiant shoutings at each other in tumultuous anger, altogether combined to form a remarkable scene. To a lively imagination, it might seem a panorama of the infernal region--that the roar of guns was the music of its orchestra, and that evil spirits joined in the _melee_, were struggling for the mastery in the smoky air above the blazing houses and fighting men. The conflagration lasted nearly all night. Next morning the ground from which the Union army had been driven was recovered by Lieut. Colonel Hawkes of the Twenty-first Massachusetts. The 24th witnessed a brave sally of the Second Michigan Volunteers upon the enemy’s advanced rifle pits north of Fort Sanders. They were at first successful, but not being properly supported, were finally repulsed, with some loss. On the night of the same day, a pontoon bridge was thrown across the river below the town, upon which a portion of Longstreet’s forces passed over, and on the 25th they made a desperate attempt to seize the heights commanding Knoxville, but Gen. Shackelford, reinforced by Col. Riley’s brigade, encountered and defeated them. Failing in that object, they planted a battery upon a high bluff close to the river’s southern bank, more than a mile distant from Fort Sanders, but partially commanding it and also the nearer earthworks on College Hill.