The castle is being renovated for a Mexican White House. A New York firm is to finish it at a cost of one hundred and sixty-five thousand dollars. Our disappointment increased as we roamed through room after room to find all mementos of Maximilian and Carlotta destroyed. Even what had been their bedchamber was a total ruin. The only things that remain are three poor pictures on the wall facing the garden. They had been spoiled, and before many hours the last thing to recall the murdered emperor and the blighted empress would be totally effaced. President Diaz is to move here when the repairs are finished; but if they are no faster with the work in the future than they have been in the past, what they have begun will be old-fashioned before the rest is completed, and Mexico will have added two or three more names to its list of presidents. On top of the castle is a beautiful garden, full of rare plants and handsome trees and shrubbery. Fountains are plenty, and statues of bronze and marble are strewn around in profusion. The stairway is made of imported Italian marble, and the balconies of alternate blocks of Italian and Puebla marble. The effect, is superb. The famous sally-port leads down through the castle from the center of the garden. It is fenced in around the month with a brass railing and covered with green vines. Magnificent aquariums divide the flowers at intervals, and the little gold and silver fish play about in the water as if life was all joy. When one looks around the beautiful landscape, the romance of the historic past fades before the grand reality of the present. From this majestic spot one commands a view of the entire valley--the soft, green meadows, the avenues of proud trees which outline the gray roads that always fade away at the foot of the chain of mountains which encircle the valley like a monstrous wall. The faint blue and purple lines of the mountains appear small and insignificant when the gaze wanders to those two incomparable beauties, Popocatepetl and Ixtaccihnatl. All nature seems a prayer. Grand old Popocatapetl stands with its white, snowy head at the feet of the White Lady. Perhaps nature has assumed this tranquilness while awaiting the old, white-headed man to say the last sad words over that beautiful still form.