all over the ground; broken china and glass of fine manufacture were scattered over the pavement outside the kitchen;--and amid all the desolation and ruin of the place, a cat sat blandly at the threshold, winking her eyes in the sunshine at the new comers. Mirrors in fragments were lying on the floor; beds ripped open, the feathers littered the rooms a foot deep; chairs, sofas, fauteuils, bedsteads, bookcases, picture-frames, images of saints, women's needlework, chests of drawers, shoes, boots, books, bottles, physic jars, smashed or torn in pieces, lay in heaps in every room. The walls and doors were hacked with swords. The genius of destruction had been at work, and had revelled in mischief. The physician's account-book lay open on a broken table: he had been stopped in the very act of debiting a dose to some neighbour, and his entry remained unfinished. Beside his account-book lay a volume of "Madame de Sévigné's Letters" in French, and a Pharmacopoeia in Russian. A little bottle of prussic acid lay so invitingly near a box of bon-bons, that I knew it would be irresistible to the first hungry private who had a taste for almonds, and I accordingly poured out the contents to prevent the possible catastrophe. Our men and horses were soon revelling in grapes and corn; and we pushed on to Eskel, and established ourselves in a house which had belonged to a Russian officer of rank. [Sidenote: NEW QUARTERS.] Every house and villa in the place was in a similar state. The better the residence, the more complete the destruction. Grand pianos, and handsome pieces of furniture, covered with silk and damasked velvet, rent to pieces, were found in more than one house. One of the instruments retained enough of its vital organs to breathe out "God save the Queen" from its lacerated brass ribs, and it was made to do so accordingly, under the very eye of a rigid portrait of his Imperial Majesty the Czar, which hung on the wall above! These portraits of the autocrat were not uncommon in the houses--nearly as common as pictures of saints with gilt and silver glories around their heads. The houses, large and small, consisted of one story only. Each house stood apart, with a large patch of vineyard around it, and a garden of fruit trees, and was fenced in from the road by a stone wall and a line of poplars or elms. A porch covered with vines protected the entrance. The rooms were clean and scrupulously whitewashed. Large outhouses, with wine-presses, stables, &c., complete the farmer's establishment.