ontingent of Weimar; to do insignificant unmilitary duty
here; very irrecognizable to nearly all! He stands at present, with
drawn bridle, on the height near Saint-Menehould, making an experiment
on the 'cannon-fever;' having ridden thither against persuasion, into
the dance and firing of the cannon-balls, with a scientific desire to
understand what that same cannon-fever may be: 'The sound of them,' says
he, 'is curious enough; as if it were compounded of the humming of tops,
the gurgling of water and the whistle of birds. By degrees you get a
very uncommon sensation; which can only be described by similitude. It
seems as if you were in some place extremely hot, and at the same time
were completely penetrated by the heat of it; so that you feel as if you
and this element you are in were perfectly on a par. The eyesight loses
nothing of its strength or distinctness; and yet it is as if all things
had got a kind of brown-red colour, which makes the situation and the
objects still more impressive on you.' (Goethe, Campagne in Frankreich,
Werke, xxx. 73.)

This is the cannon-fever, as a World-Poet feels it.--A man entirely
irrecognisable! In whose irrecognisable head, meanwhile, there verily
is the spiritual counterpart (and call it complement) of this same huge
Death-Birth of the World; which now effectuates itself, outwardly in the
Argonne, in such cannon-thunder; inwardly, in the irrecognisable
head, quite otherwise than by thunder! Mark that man, O Reader, as the
memorablest of all the memorable in this Argonne Campaign. What we say
of him is not dream, nor flourish of rhetoric; but scientific historic
fact; as many men, now at this distance, see or begin to see.

But the large public thing we had to remark is this: That the Twentieth
of September, 1792, was a raw morning covered with mist; that from three
in the morning Sainte-Menehould, and those Villages and homesteads
we know of old were stirred by the rumble of artillery-wagons, by the
clatter of hoofs, and many footed tramp of men: all manner of military,
Patriot and Prussian, taking up positions, on the Heights of La Lune
and other Heights; shifting and shoving,--seemingly in some dread
chess-game; which may the Heavens turn to good! The Miller of Valmy has
fled dusty under ground; his Mill, were it never so windy, will
have rest to-day. At seven in the morning the mist clears off: see
Kellermann, Dumouriez' second in command, with 'eighteen pieces of
cannon,'