itself turned up or trampled into mud by the feet of men and horses. Hitchins and I dismounted at the grand entrance into the house; and, by way of securing our horses, shut them up in a little room to which a door was still left, and proceeded to inspect the interior of this once splendid mansion. Shouts and laughter resounded through the building. The hussars were busy completing the work of destruction; and as we passed the magnificent stairs leading up from the hall, we narrowly escaped being crushed under a large mirror which these gentlemen at that very moment launched over the banisters above with loud cheers. The ground-floor on the side fronting the park consisted of a suite of magnificent rooms, lofty, finely proportioned, and lighted by a profusion (as we should deem it) of windows down to the floor. These had been most luxuriously and richly furnished; now they were empty, the papering hanging in rags from the walls, and even the cornices destroyed more or less. Every kind of abuse of France and the French was written on the walls. In one room was the remnant of a grand piano. The sad reflections awakened by this sight may be more easily conceived than described, and I turned from it with a sickening and overwhelming sensation of disgust, in which I am sure Hitchins fully participated. The next room seemed to have been chosen as the place of execution of all the porcelain in the house, which had there been collected for a grand smash. The handsomest Sêvre and Dresden vases, tea and dinner services, formed heaps of fragments all over the floor, and a large porcelain stove had shared the same fate. Another room had been lined with mirrors from the ceiling to the floor; it appeared these had been made targets of, for many were the marks of pistol-balls on the walls they had covered; little remained of these except some parts of their rich gilt frames. The last room of the suite had the end farthest from the windows semicircular, and this end had been fitted up with benches, _en amphithéâtre_. The whole of this room was painted to represent the interior of a forest, and on one side was a pool of water, in which several naked nymphs were amusing themselves. The plaster was torn down in large patches, and the nymphs stabbed all over with bayonets. The upper floor consisted of bed-rooms, dressing-rooms, and baths, and exhibited the same melancholy destruction as those below; even the leaden lining of the baths, the leaden water-pipes, &c., were cut to pieces. On inquiring of one hussar why they so particularly wreaked their vengeance on this house, he said because it belonged to Jerome Buonaparte, whom every German detested. Having seen enough here, we looked into another chateau somewhat smaller, but which had also been something very fine; it was precisely in the same state. A very fine library had been here, but the books had been thrown out of window; a small pond below had received multitudes of them, and the rest were