besieging Dresden have occurred; or if it had suggested itself, the
hideous difficulties would at once have banished it again, or left
it only as a pious wish. But it is strokes of this kind that
characterize the great man. Often enough they have succeeded, been
decisive of great campaigns and wars, and become splendid in the
eyes of all mankind; sometimes, as in this case, they have only
deserved to succeed, and to be splendid in the eyes of judges.
How get these masses of enemies lured away, so that you could try
such a thing? There lay the difficulty; insuperable altogether,
except by the most fine and appropriate treatment. Of a truth, it
required a connected series of the wisest measures and most secret
artifices of war;--and withal, that you should throw over them such
a veil as would lead your enemy to see in them precisely the
reverse of what they meant. How all this was to be set in action,
and how the Enemy's own plans, intentions and moods of mind were to
be used as raw material for attainment of your object,--studious
readers will best see in the manoeuvres of the King in his now more
than critical condition; which do certainly exhibit the completest
masterpiece in the Art of leading Armies that Europe has
ever seen."

Tempelhof is well enough aware, as readers should continue to be,
that, primarily, and onward for three weeks more, not Dresden, but
the getting to Silesia on good terms, is Friedrich's main
enterprise: Dresden only a supplement or substitute, a second
string to his bow, till the first fail. But, in effect, the two
enterprises or strings coincide, or are one, till the first of them
fail; and Tempelhof's eulogy will apply to either. The initiatory
step to either is a Second Feat of Marching;--still notabler than
the former, which has had this poor issue. Soldiers of the studious