the Rappahannock.
We have no means of knowing their relative numbers; but I suspect Gen.
Hooker commands more than 100,000 men, while Gen. Lee's army, perhaps,
does not exceed 55,000 efficients.

Accounts by passengers, and reports from the telegraph operators at the
northern end of the line, some ten or twelve miles this side of the
armies, indicate that the battle was joined early this morning.
Certainly heavy cannonading was heard. Yet nothing important transpired
up to 3 P.M., when I left the department, else I should have known it.
Still, the battle may be raging, without, as yet, decisive result, and
the general may not have leisure to be dictating dispatches.

Yet the heavy artillery may be only the preliminary overture to the
desperate engagement; and it seems to me that several days might be
spent in manoeuvring into position before the shock of arms occurs,
which will lay so many heads low in the dust.

But a great battle seems inevitable. All the world knows the fighting
qualifications of Gen. Lee, and the brave army he commands; and Gen.
Hooker will, of course, make every effort to sustain his reputation as
"fighting Joe." Besides, he commands, for the first time, an army: and
knows well that failure to fight, or failure to win, will consign him to
the same disgrace of all his predecessors who have hitherto commanded
the "Army of the Potomac."

It is certain that a column of Federal cavalry, yesterday, cut the
Central Railroad at Trevillian's depot, which prevents communication
with Gordonsville, if we should desire to send heavy stores thither. And
some suppose Lee is manoeuvring to get in the rear of Hooker, which
would place the enemy between him and Richmond! He could then cut off
his supplies, now being drawn by wagons some twenty or thirty miles, and
spread alarm even to Washington. But, then, how would it be with
Richmond, if Hooker should accept the position, and if the force at
Suffolk should advance on the south side of the river, and gun-boats and
transports were to come, simultaneously, up the York and James? Has
Hooker the genius to conceive such a plan? Suppose it were so, and that
he has shipped his supplies from the Potomac--the supplies which Stuart
expects to capture--with the desperate resolution, abandoning his base
on the Rappahannock, to force a junction with the heavy detachments
south and east of this city? A Napoleon would get Richmond--_but then
Lee might get Washington_! Longst