"Crossing under the grand stairway, we tumbled through a wood-closet into the drawing-room, a splendid apartment on the first floor of the 'new house,' corresponding to the banquet-salon, only that the side wall, instead of having windows, is penetrated by three wide arches opening into a suite of state apartments extending through the old chateau. The most noticeable things in these rooms are the hangings, arranged apparently in chronological series, beginning with the quaint and curious needlework covering the bare stone walls of the red tower, and continuing in regular order through the several rooms, to the masterpieces of Lebrun and Mignard. Some of them have fallen, and lie in mouldering heaps on the floor, but most of them are still in place, and in none of the royal palaces I have visited is the progress of the art of tapestry so fully illustrated as here. We could have spent the day with delight in comparing the different specimens, but our half-suffocated guide protested so decidedly against our dust-raising that we had to desist long before we wanted to. The furniture of these rooms is also arranged in historic order, but of course the succession is not so marked as in the case of the tapestries; still, between the rude black wooden settles of the earliest period and the gilded and brocaded fauteuils of the Louis Quatorze salon the contrast is sufficiently striking. The splendors of the great drawing-room are still fresh: the white enamel is brilliant, the ormolu untarnished, and the rich upholstery gorgeous as when first received from Paris. A good American 'spring cleaning' would put this, and indeed most of the apartments, in condition for immediate occupancy. "The greater number of the pictures are family portraits, like those of any other gallery of the same sort, but in the modern rooms are several examples of Flemish masters of great interest and value. A treck-schuyt, with market-women, by Albert Cuyp, quite characteristic of that artist and his school, a tavern fireside by Ostade, and two of Quintin Matsys' studies of single figures, are the most important. "I must not omit to mention a remarkable old cabinet in one of these state rooms, which Perry recognized as a specimen of Bruges carving of the fifteenth century. It is a very curious and wonderfully ingenious piece of work, the ornamentation appearing at first like a rather confused grouping of flowers and fruit cut in high relief, but seen at the proper angle rich and beautiful compositions are discovered of the most intricate and difficult character--processions of cupids, leading leopards or tugging at great wains; children at play, chasing each other through mazes of vines; juvenile lovers, sentimentalizing; and a hundred pretty conceits, all formed by the outlines of the fruit and flowers first seen. Each figure is perfectly represented, and each graceful and delicate fancy is carried out with marvellous skill.