Cheering news from the North.
The dark cloud which hung for awhile over the theatre of war in the West is rapidly disappearing, and a flood of light is poured upon the hitherto confused history of the siege of Vicksburg by the glad lidings which come to us from the North. Awakening from their short-lived dream of conquest and subjugation, the deluded subjects of Abraham the First have at last found out that Vicksburg is not to be had except by hard fighting — by such fighting as they never have done and never will do so long as Yankee courage and Yankee generalship remain unchanged.--Whilst the heroic garrison of the Western Gibraltar, surrounded by an overwhelming best, are mowing them down by thousands at every point of their line of attack, Johnson, with retribution, disaster and death in his train, is swiftly approaching in their flank and rear, and may at any moment strike a blow that will reverberate through all Yankeedom, and close by one single thunderclap the campaign of the West. Meanwhile, Sterling Price is again on the war path, and the name of the old hero resounds like the trumpet of judgment in the ears of the cowardly oppressor.The flames of insurrection, yet emouldering in Missouri, will blaze out with redoubled fury at his approach, and an army of patriots will spring up from the soil under the martial tread of his patrict bands. By the destruction of Grant's army — and, unless he escapes by availing himself of the Yankee transports on the Mississippi, we anticipate nothing less from the decisive battle which will be forced upon him--Missouri, Arkansas, and Western Louisiana will be at once freed from the polluting presence of the hybrid and multicolored hordes by whom they are now overrun and Banks, the hero of many retreats, will have to repeat on a grand scale his strategic operations of last year, when he made such unprecedented fast time under the lash of Stonewall Jackson. When the universal rout begins, as begin it must, let every soldier of our victorious host remember the long series of fiendish outrages perpstrated by our savage foes, and let the watch word be--
"And damned be he who first cries: Hold, enough!"
