which might have been more serious otherwise. As it is, there play
cannon across the River upon him:--Why not bend to right, and get
out of range, asks the reader? The Spessart Hills rise, high and
woody, on the right; and there is in many places no marching except
within range. Noailles has Five effective Batteries, at the various
good points, on his side of the River:--and that is nothing to what
he has got ready for us, were we once at Dettingen, within wind of
his Two Bridges a little beyond! Noailles has us in a perfect
mouse-trap, SOURICIERE as he felinely calls it; and calculates on
having annihilation ready for us at Dettingen.

"Dettingen, short way above those Pontoons at Seligenstadt, is near
eight miles westward [NORTHwestward, but let us use the briefer
term] from Aschaffenburg: Dettingen is a poor peasant Village, of
some size, close on the Mayn, and on our side of it. A Brook,
coming down from the Spessart Mountains, falls into the Mayn there;
having formed for itself, there and upwards, a considerable dell or
hollow way; chiefly on the western or right bank of which stands
the Village with its barnyards and piggeries: on both sides of the
great High-road, which here crosses the Brook, and will lead you to
Hanau twenty miles off,--or back to Aschaffenburg, and even to
Nurnberg and the Donau Countries, if you persevere. Except that of
the high-road, Dettingen Brook has no bridge. Above the Village,
after coming from the Mountains, the banks of it are boggy;
especially the western bank, which spreads out into a scrubby waste
of moor, for some good space. In which scrubby moor, as elsewhere
in this dell or hollow way itself, where the Village hangs, with
its hedges, piggeries, colegarths,--there is like to be bad enough
marching for a column of men! Noailles, as we said, has Two Bridges
thrown across the Mayn, just below; and the last of his Five