eed of it here just now.

"Captains and men were impatient of that long loitering, hanging idle
about Frankfurt all through May; and they have at length started real
business,--with more valor than discretion, it is feared. They are some
40 or 44,000 strong: English 16,000; Hanoverians the like number; and of
Austrians [by theory 20,000], say, in effect, 12,000 or even 8,000: all
paid by England. They have Hanau for Magazine; they have rearguard of
12,000 [the 6,000 Hessians, and 6,000 new Hanoverians], who at last
are actually on march thither, near arriving there: 'Forward!' said the
Captaincy [said Stair, chiefly, it was thought]: 'Shall the whole summer
waste itself to no purpose?'--and are up the River thus far, not on the
most considerate terms.

"What this Pragmatic Army means to do? That is, and has been, a great
question for all the world; especially for Noailles and the French,--not
to say, for the Pragmatic itself! 'Get into Lorraine?' think the French:
'Get into Alsace, and wrest it from us, for behoof of her Hungarian
Majesty,'--plundered goods, which indeed belong to the Reich and her,
in a sense! ELS-SASS (Alsace, OUTER-seat), with its ROAD-Fortress
(STRASburg) plundered from the Holy Romish Reich by Louis XIV., in a way
no one can forget; actually plundered, as if by highway robbery, or
by highway robbery and attorneyism combined, on the part of that
great Sovereign. 'To Strasburg? To Lorraine perhaps? Or to the Three
Bishoprics'" (Metz, Toul, Verdun:--readers recollect that Siege of
Metz, which broke the great heart of Karl V.? Who raged and fired as man
seldom did, with 50,000 men, against Guise and the intrusive French, for
six weeks; sound of his cannon heard at Strasburg on winter nights, 300
years ago: to no purpose; for his Captains of the Siege, after trial and
second trial, solemnly shook their heads; and the great Kaiser, breaking
into tears, had to raise the Siege of Metz; and went his way, never to
smile more in this world: and Metz, and Toul, and Verdun, remain with
the French ever since):--"To the Three Bishoprics, possibly enough!"

"'Or they may purpose for the Donau Countries, where Broglio is
crackling off like trains of gunpowder; and lend hand to Prince Karl,
thereby enclosing Broglio fires?' This, according to present aspects, is
between two the likeliest. And perhaps, had provenders and arrangements
been made beforehand for such a march, this had been the feasiblest:
and, to my ow