The loosest ideas prevail as to the execution of the “abandoned-property” act of the Thirty-seventh Congress. Deserted houses, not absolutely needed for military purposes, can be rented for handsome sums, and to whatever amounts can be thus realized the Government has an equitable as well as legal claim. But here, and report says everywhere throughout the South, are evidences of the old clashing betwixt War and Treasury Department officials; and between them, the revenue the Government ought to derive from the abandoned property, is sadly reduced. The practice of regarding everything left in the country as legitimate prize to the first officer who discovers it, has led, in some cases, to performances little creditable to the national uniform. What shall be thought of the officer who, finding a fine law library, straightway packed it up and sent it to his office in the North? Or what shall be said of the taste of that other officer who, finding in an old country residence a series of family portraits, imagined that they would form very pretty parlor ornaments anywhere, and sent the entire set, embracing the ancestors of the haughty old South Carolinian for generations back, to look down from the walls of his Yankee residence? * * * * * One sees, at first, very little in the mere external appearance of Wilmington to indicate the sufferings of war. The city is finely built (for the South); the streets are lined with noble avenues of trees; many of the residences are surrounded with elegant shrubbery; there is a bewildering wealth of flowers; the streets are full, and many of the stores are open. Sutlers, however, have taken the places of the old dealers; and many of the inhabitants are inconceivably helpless and destitute. While I was riding over the city with Captain Myers, a young Ohio artillerist, a formerly wealthy citizen approached him to beg the favor of some means of taking his family three or four miles into the country. The officer could only offer the broken “Southron” a pair of mules and an army wagon; and this shabby outfit, which four years ago he would not have permitted his body servant to use, he gratefully accepted for his wife and daughter!