Notwithstanding the silence of General Howe, concerning his purpose in moving his command to Scarsdale, instead of to the White Plains, there is reason for supposing that it was done for the purpose of cutting off the column commanded by General Lee, before it could join the main body; that preparations for the movement, on the following morning, were made on the afternoon and evening of the day of the arrival of the Royal Army, at Scarsdale; and that it was prevented by the withdrawal of the column which it was intended to attack, from its designated route, into a road which was further westward, so that, when the time came for the attack, General Lee, by a forced march, during the night, was several miles nearer to the main body of the Army, and entirely beyond the reach of General Howe. 4 «» .

3 Other instances of that peculiar caution were seen, at the White Plains, three days after the instance now under notice, when the main body of the Army was halted, until the Americans had been driven from Chatterton's-hill, and, most disastrously to the Americans, in the following year, when the fruits of the victory, at Germantown, were loBt by the halt of the main body, in order to dislodge a handful of the Royal Army who bad occupied aud who held the Chew mansion.

4 In a letterwhich was written by an Officer of the Koyal Army, dated on the tenth of November, and printed in The Middlesex Journal and Evening Advertiser, No. 1209, London : From Saturday, December 21, to Tuesday, December 24, 1776, will be found our authority for what we have said of the purposes of General Howe, of his preparations for carrying out those purposes, and of the cause of his disappointment ; and a reference to the letter of Colonel Glover, with which our readers are already familiar, ("Mile-Square, October 22, 1776,") there ib an ample confirmation of each of the statements -- the Colonel erroneously stated that the Koyal Army was moved from New Rochelle, on Sunday, the twenty-seventh of October, instead of on Friday, the twenty-fifth of that month, and so continued to be two days too late, in each of his subsequent statements ; but, in all else, his statements of the movement of General Howe ; of the discovery, by General Lee, of the purpose to cut him off from the main body of the Army ; of the consequent detour of the column, into the Dobbs's-ferry road ; of its forced night-march ; and of