From General Lee's army.
[from our own correspondent.] Army of Northern Virginia, Near Spotsylvania C. H., May 26th, 1864.
Grant has shown no signs of advance for the past two days. He is doubtless biding his time till the reinforcements, of which Meade speaks so confidently, shall have arrived.
Meantime, for the seventeenth day, the brave cohorts of the South have with unbroken front, in line of battle and on the march, opposed the enemy and beaten them back.
One other event occurred yesterday, which, en passant, I will relate.
About three o'clock on yesterday afternoon, Gen. Ewell moved forward with a sufficient force in order to feel the enemy's position on their extreme right, our left.
General E. struck their columns near the main road leading from Fredericksburg to Spotsylvania Court House, some eight miles from the former and three miles from the latter place, about half past 4 o'clock in the afternoon.
From this time until nine o'clock at night, the battle raged and roared most furiously.
The enemy having repulsed our attack attempted in turn to press us, when they were hurried back most successfully.
At one time our line of skirmishers reached the enemy's wagon train, which was passing along the high road, but were forced to give back without doing them any harm save shooting and capturing a few mules.--About nine o'clock the fighting ceased, and our boys fell back to their entrenched position.
During the engagement we lost some two hundred and fifty men killed, wounded, and missing.
Gen. Ewell's horse was shot from under him, giving him a hard fall, but he is all right again, and is to-day in the saddle.
It is conjectured that the enemy must have lost fully five hundred in killed and wounded.
At least their prisoners, of whom we captured eighty or ninety, so estimate.
The force which we encountered and which was found to be strongly entrenched, consisted of Hancock's and Burnsides's corps.
On the whole, we neither gained nor lost by this little affair.
The troops engaged in the expedition were somewhat fatigued when they reached camp, but a day's rest will put them all right again.
The weather to-day is very warm, and the roads are drying quite fast.
It seems to me almost useless to repeat that the troops are in the best possible spirits, notwithstanding the fatigue, heat and exposure to which they have been subjected for the last three weeks; and yet, lest if I fail to speak of the morale of the army, wrong inferences may be drawn, I will say that the spirits of all, officers and men, are most buoyant, and that I have yet to meet with the first soldier who lacks confidence either in Gen. Lee or our final success.
The atmosphere is fully impregnated with the stench arising from portions of the battle-field over which I have passed, and which is in close proximity to our lines.
Grant, in every instance, has left his dead unburied, and his wounded uncared for, whilst nearly all of our stain have been buried and our wounded well treated.
Grant seems to be still moving around towards our right.
As I predicted in a previous letter, he will do nothing just yet but will wait until his armies are recruited, his commissariat supplied, and his medical chests renewed; then doubtless with all haste another Hecatomb of victims "butchered to make a Lincoln holiday."
Our losses in the rights since the campaign begun will, I am told, foot up about twelve thousand killed and wounded, of which three thousand will be able to return to duty in thirty days. X. 