The Sun.
London, England, 1863-07-17 00:00:00

THERMOMETER.

This morning
This day at Two o'clock 7O

Barometer-30.01.
Wind—S.-Westerly ; light, and fine weather.

HIGH WATER AT LONDON BRIDGE.

THIS DAL—Morning, 3h. 6m.—Afternoon, 3h. 20m
To-bionnow.-Morning, 3h. 40m.—Afternoon, 3h. 54m

P 4-781.,
41 Alt .47.-__.4kiver te.
-LO-

LONDON, FRIDAY, JULY 17, 1863.

A fragmentary scrap of additional news in regard
to the desperate fighting at Gettysburg, enables us
to appreciate more distinctly even than yesterday
upon which side, before the last advices left, lay the
advantage. This brief supplementary morsel of
intelligence, moreover, brings down the record of
events upon that battle-ground to the evening
of the 33 instant—down to the very eve of the greai
Republican anniversary. Again the Federal re-
porters announce the conflict to have been very
fierce in its character. Always indulging in the
very strongest language—one describes the
fight as " the most terrific," another as " the
most awful" that has yet occurred since the war com-
menced. It is curious to analyse the expressions in
-which they put forward their claims to be regarded
—in this last and, if we are really for once to be-
lieve them, fiercest conflict—as having proved in
the end successful. " Our men," says a special
despatch from Hanover, " stood up heroically."
Observe, "stood up," simply—not ".advanced!"
Again, " the loss on both sides was tremendous."
Not, as hitherto, in all the previous fighting, at the
earliest intelligence, before the actual statistics come
dropping in, not as hitherto, a grievous loss on the
side of—the Confederates. Now, it looks badly in-
deed for the North, when their very first claim of
the blushing honours of war upon this last day's
fighting, comes laden with the significant
acknowledgment that the loss on both sides had
been tremendous. Notwithstanding which, the
Federal reporter—who mentions the fact of his hav-
ing left the battlefield as late as six o'clock on the
3d inst.—asserts quite confidently "We had the best
of the fight to-day." He does not say in what, he
does not name any one single advantage in parti-
cular. Bat in lieu of that, he follows up his boastful
claim of victory to the Federals, with this fatally
contradictory confession ; " And," he continues,
" the General says that if Coucer arrives to-night,
the victory is ours beyona a doubt." So, it all
rests—in spite of the previous declaration, "We had
the best of it to-day"—it all still clearly rests,
even then, upon a contingency ! If such and such
an event comes to pass, "if COUCH arrives to -
night"' the General says that" then " the victory
is ours beyond a doubt." A pretty plain revelation,
that unlucky employment of the phrase " beyond a
doubt," in this or that contingency, that so far as
gone, even in the estimation of the
over-confident Federals themselves, there was "a
doubt," as the events actually were, about the
advantage being their's already. The immediately
preceding announcement, as of a fact beyond dis-
pute, "We had the best of the fight to-day," to the
contrary, nevertheless, notwithstanding
Perhaps the most audacious attempt at boasting
beyond the reach of all Conceivable credulity ever
yet ventured upon by any Yankee gobemouehe, in
defiance of the common sense of his fellow-creatures,
is evidenced, by the grave announcement, as of
an actual occurrence, of the following preposterous
incident—an incident coolly related as having just
transpired in the neighbourhood of Gettysburg
"Lieut. KNOWLES "—says this delightful Yankee
MUNCHAUSEN, who has a wonderful precision in
his style of narrative, it will be observed,
both in regard to names and in regard to num-
bers—" Lieut :nant KNOWLES, with only eight
men of Captain BOYD'S command, charged upon
SeVentrfiCe rebel cavalry, capturing twenty-two
men and thirty-three horses. When returning to
the main command he was cut off by about one
hundred and fifty mounted rebels. Ho had to
abandon his booty, but not his prisoners, and cut
lis way out !" Yet the narrator can quite calmly
add, while perpending this absolutely astounding
achievement, "The act was a daring and gallant one!"
Nothing more I As though ;he charging of seventy
five horsemen by eight, and the capture by eight from
those seventy-five, of twenty-two prisoners and
thirty-three horses [one wonders how many hands
the eight Federals had amon-get them ! and whether
each was a Yankee BRIARELTS!] were but the most
ordinary instance of gallantry among the Federal
troopers ! To say nothing whatever of the eight
captors of those twenty-two men and thirty-three