Though each distinctive as the soul Of some new world not yet begun, In bright career their courses blend Round Liberty's unchanging Sun. Thus ever shine, ye Stars, for all! And palsied be the hand that harms Earth's pleading signal to the skies, And Heav'ns immortal Coat of Arms. You are probably aware, my boy, that the unconquerable Mackerel Brigade is still advancing upon Washington in a highly respectable and strategic manner; and that all correspondents are excluded from the lines, lest some of them, in their natural blackness of heart, should construe the advance upon Washington into a retreat from Richmond. But I gained admission to the scene by adopting the airy and pleasing uniform of the Southern Confederacy; and am thereby enabled to give you some further account of the skillful retrograde advance to which I dimly referred in my absorbing last. The uniform of the Southern Confederacy is much respected by many of our officers, my boy, and is the only guise in which a fellow-being may scrutinize the national strategic works with entire safety. Thus attired, I joined the Mackerel Brigade in its cheerful work of pushing Richmond away from its martial front, and having penetrated to the rear where horrible carnage was being wrought in the frantic ranks of the Confederacy, I beheld the idolized General of the Mackerel Brigade anxiously searching for something upon the ground. In a moment, he looked up, and says he to the warriors in his neighborhood: "My children, have you seen anything of a small black bottle that I placed upon the grass, just now, when I turned to speak to my aid?" A Mackerel chap coughed respectfully, and says he: "I guess it was taken by some equestrian Confederacies, which has just made another raid." "Thunder!" says the General, "that's the third bottle I've lost in the same way within an hour." And he proceeded slowly and thoughtfully to mount his horse, which stood eyeing him with funereal solemnity and many inequalities of surface. Turning to another part of the line, my boy, I beheld Captain Villiam Brown and Captain Bob Shorty in the act of performing a great strategic movement with the indomitable Conic Section, many of whom were employing the moment to take a last look at the canteens presented to them before leaving home by their devoted mothers. A number of reckless Confederacies had just crossed a bridge spanning a small stream near by, and the object of this daring movement was to suddenly destroy the bridge before they could retreat and then make prisoners of the whole. It was a sublime conception, my boy--it was a sublime conception, and rich with strategy.