After having demolished the monuments of the genius and industry of their own countrymen, they went forth to ransack other countries, and destroyed all they could not carry away with them. Whatever had been raised by the talents, the piety or the care of the lovers of science, arts and literature, became the object of their vandalism or their peculation. Their policy had no element but to divide in order to conquer, and so arrive at universal domination by universal confusion. Occupied constantly on the destruction of Europe in detail, they trampled under their feet Monarchies and Republics alike. Every time I have paced along the galleries of the Louvre sentiments of hatred and indignation took possession of my breast. Amidst all the blaze of artistic beauty I never entered nor left without feelings of disgust. I confess I received no gratification from all the Raphaels, Titians, and Correggios I saw there. In their _proper places_ I could have gazed with transport upon these masterpieces, but I cannot look with pleasure on productions thus violently torn from their lawful owners. Of all the countries which have been undone by French havock Italy has suffered the most, and its miseries are least known to the world. The French have literally exhausted upon that country the fecundity of rapine, cheating and fury. They have rendered themselves masters of its correspondence, and all we know now of the existence of that desolated country is through the frequent eruptions of a tyranny without remorse, of a powerless despair and of the accumulations of spoil which decorates the public exhibitions of Paris. The contributions of the French were nothing less than a general sack, the encyclopædia of their thefts forms a monument of curiosity. [Sidenote: STOLEN PICTURES] The barbarians who formerly overran Italy despised art, and neglected to take possession of such treasures. The fanatical Mussulman destroyed them as monuments of idolatry. But in our times Academicians, poets, orators, philosophers, members of the National Institute, have crossed the Alps to strip Italy of her talents, to force from her the labours of her children, the most sacred illustration of a people, a property which the laws of war among civilised nations has hitherto held to be inviolable until the present epoch, when a gang of savage sophists have replunged Italy into a darkness worse than any of the early ages of Europe. Those who are ignorant of the methods by which a thief has realised an immense fortune may be forgiven for their admiration of his wealth and treasures, but the man who is acquainted with the villainy employed in such an accumulation is inexcusable should he lavish praises on objects in that thief’s possession. Therefore, with the knowledge that none of these pictures belong to France, and that they are all stolen goods acquired by fraud, injustice and murder, I could not coolly fix my eyes upon them nor repeat ecstacies of vulgar adulation.