While these things were transpiring in the city, the President and his Cabinet were fleeing into Virginia. During the battle of Bladensburg, Mrs. Madison had sat in the Presidential mansion, listening to the roar of cannon in the distance, and anxiously sweeping the road, with her spy-glass, to catch the first approach of her husband, but saw instead, "groups of military, wandering in all directions, as if there was a lack of arms or of spirit, to fight for their own firesides." A carriage stood waiting at the door, filled with plate and other valuables, ready to leave at a moment's warning. The Mayor of the city waited on her, urging her to depart, but she bravely refused, saying she would not stir till she heard from her husband. At length a note from him, in pencil-marks, arrived, bidding her flee. Still delaying, till she could detach a portrait of Washington, by Stuart, from the wall, her friends remonstrated with her. Finding it would take too long to unscrew the painting from the walls, she seized a carving-knife, and cutting the canvas out, hurried away. At Georgetown she met her husband, who, with his Cabinet, in trepidation and alarm, was en route for Virginia. Just as the flames were kindling in the capitol, the President, Mr. Monroe, Mr. Rush, Mr. Mason, and Carroll, were assembled on the shores of the Potomac, where but one little boat could be found to transport them over. Desponding and sad, they were rowed across in the gloom, a part at a time, and mounting their horses, rode hurriedly and sadly away. Mrs. Madison returned towards Georgetown, accompanied by nine troopers, and stopped ten miles and a half from the town. Trembling from the anxiety and fright of the day--separated from her husband, now a fugitive in the darkness--oppressed with fears and gloomy forebodings, she sat down by an open window, and through the tears that streamed from her eyes, gazed forth on the flames of the burning city, and listened with palpitating heart to the muffled shouts and tumult that rose in the distance. Before daylight, she, with her lady companions, started for a place of rendezvous appointed by her husband, sixteen miles from Georgetown. The 25th of August dawned gloomily over the smouldering city, and the red sun, as he rolled into view, looked on a scene of devastation and ruin. From their drunken orgies, negroes and soldiers crawled forth to the light of day, roused by the reveille from the hill of the capitol, and the morning gun that sent its echoes through the sultry air.