NEWS of a great battle has reached the metropolis. The action was not fought on American soil; and, as far as we know, war has not broken out between Denmark and Germany; so that it cannot be of those incensed nations that we speak. The engagement to which we allude was waged on a very different field from Sharpsburg or Chattanooga; and readers, sickened with the tale of constant contests, need not shrink from our recital. Yet there are splendid manoeuvres in it, and magnificent generalship, flank movements, called by another name ; and masterly advances and retreats, consummated by such a victory as makes a hero of of every man who took a part in the contest.

The most glorious and singular feature of this event is, that the results are not counted in deaths, but lives—not in agony and defeat, but in delight, restoration, and rescue—not in the number of prisoners, but in the roll of friends and brothers relieved. The battle to which we refer was that which was won by the Ramsgate life-boat on Friday night, the 4th December ( Vide p. 357). It was fought, night and day—tooth and nail— against those old enemies of mankind, the fierce storm and the wild sea; and the field was that desolate and dangerous labyrinth of sands which makes a trap of the mouth of our chief river. It is customary to describe the scene of a great engagement; but some, at least, of our readers know the watery maze of which we are speaking. Not so many, however, know it as it is by night in such a savage storm as raged on Thursday, when the action between true manhood and the terrible tempest began. To realise that, it is almost necessary to have borne a part in such a fight; for dark and dreadful is the scenery of the midnight estuary. The huge waves, lapping and curving in from the German Ocean, with the tide behind them and the wind against their crests, break from black water into white over a hundred concealed sands and shoals; sweep in fury along a hundred narrow channels, where a ship's length that side or this' is destruction; and the only sign of man in the dark, dancing panorama of the hurricane is the tossing light-ship and the rolling buoy. On the same evening last week, two large vessels lay in this miserable predicament—the Fusilier on the Girdler Sand, the Demerara on that known as the Shingles. The former was an emigrant-ship full of men, women, and children; the latter had a crew of 18 men and a pilot; and the best seamen on board of each must have felt, as darkness gathered over the stranded vessels, that the chances were a hundred to one against any from either reaching the shore, except as water-washed 'corpses, with the marsh-birds screaming above them, and the fragments of their ship drifting in with cargo, dead men, and sea-weed.

Thanks to the Ramsgate life-boat, however, and to the gallant fellows who manned her, and the steam-tug Aid, every soul from both those vessels is safe and sound; and the battle with the waves and winds was a glorious victory. As night fell, the light-ship off Margate sent up rockets of distress, signal- ling that a vessel was on shore. At 8 • 45 P.M. the Aid tug started from Ramsgate with the life-boat in tow, rounded "Longnose" in a night as dark as pitch, and a sea as wild as madness, and made for the Tongue lightship.

At midnight they reached and hailed the keepers, and learned that the distressed vessel was on the Shingles N.W. from the light, or pretty well into the teeth of the wind.

Tug and life-boat groped and fought their way north-eastward, but could see nothing, and thereupon bore off to the Prince's light-ship, also firing minute-guns. The keepers on board were hailed, and gave information that the vessel was on the shallow part of " the Girdler," whither tug and life-boat gallantly fought their way. Presently, through the driving spray and rain, they make out the doomed ship, burning tar-barrels; and the indefatigable little steamer struggles to a point from which the life-boat can drop down in the furious water to her lee. They come alongside, and find the vessel full of shrieking women and children, whose cries, with the whistle of the wind in the rigging, and the swash and crash of the breakers upon her hull and deck, make such a chorus as would soon have been a " dead march " for the Fusilier. All that the coxswain observes, however, about the tremendous moment is, that," used as we are to such sights, this made us doubly anxious about the safety of those we had come to rescue." A sort of " double hitch," knotted on to their resolution to save all hands, was the effect of the scene upon the Ramsgate life-boat men.

The men were hailed to lower the women first in " bowlines," then the children in blankets; and after four trips, everybody but the captain and crew were taken off to the tug, for the tide was falling, and there was a chance for the ship. But 'the tug, which started for Ramsgate at daylight with those who had been saved, had not left the life-boat by the wreck more than an hour and a half, when she steamed back to say that another large ship was ashore upon "the Shingles." This was, of course, the one they had sought in vain overnight; and away went the life-boat again across the sands in the daylight, and reached the Demerara. Her crew of 18, with the Trinity pilot, had been clinging to the rigging all the ten hours of that terrible night; and, with another boat-load of lives saved, the Aid steam-tug went back, with her plucky little tender at her stern, to Ramsgate Harbour. There they arrived at 12'15 on Friday; and the coxswain, as though he were landing boxes of oranges, and had come off an ordinary voyage, says : " We put ashore about 120 souls." It was such a glorious midnight haul of lives saved —wives' love rescued for husbands, fathers' love preserved for children, citizens restored to service and work in this world—that the coxswain did not take the pains to be particular as to the exact statistics of the splendid business. "About 120 souls," he says, more or less; that was the sum of the grand and noble " business " done that night on the Girdler and the Shingles by the Ramsgate life-boat crew.

Can our readers—we allude to those who peruse as in easy chairs over the comfortable breakfast-table — comprehend that night's performance? We do not mean in its results or its gallantry, but in its details.

Can they quite grasp what it is to be sixteen hours hard at work, fighting the winds and the waves in a December hurricane, with a sea "on" that sweeps tons of gray water over the boat at every third stroke, and a wind that seems to turn the soaked clothes on the body into ice ? These Ramsgate men did it; and if the Aid had puffed up to them with news of another wreck on Longnose, we believe they would have shaken off" their deadly fatigue and drowsiness, and fought another bout for human life against the big billows and the savage storm. Yet we call these fellows the " common people," and we sometimes raise a subscription for them ; while, if a diplomat had been sixteen minutes, instead of hours, in half such a difficulty, his breast would not have breadth enough to wear his orders.

But thank God they are "common," and if the funds of the NATIONAL LIFE-BOAT INSTITUTION shall be so maintained as to enable it to keep up its large life-saving fleet, hardy seamen, and brave hearts, will never be wanting to man its boats. Thank God, we repeat, that they are " common," and that the good old breed of such men is not dead with JOHN PRINGLE, Lord NELSON'S coxswain in the Victory, who " went aloft" last week 104 years of age at his death. Not dead, nor likely to be dead, while such a crew as manned the Ramsgate life-boat and tug can be got together; and while the breed lasts, though our enemies may plate their war-ships a yard thick—the " march of Britannia " will still be " on the mountain waves," sublime, supreme, secure.