scattered as though a magazine had exploded in its midst. Thirty soldiers, besides many of the inhabitants, were overwhelmed in the ruins. Fleeing before this same hurricane, Mrs. Madison approached the tavern designated by the President as the place where he would meet her, but was refused admittance by the terrified women within, who had also fled thither, because she was the wife of the man who had involved them in those horrors of war, made still more terrible by the visitation of God. He, in thus turning day into night, had evinced his displeasure, and foretold his judgments; and not until an entrance was forced by the men, would they allow her a shelter from the storm. There her husband, the fugitive President of the republic, drenched with rain, hungry and exhausted, joined her in the evening. Provided with nothing but a cold lunch, he retired to his miserable couch, not knowing what tidings the morning would bring him. In the mean time General Ross, chagrined at the part he had been compelled to play--filled with self-reproaches at the wanton destruction of a public library, was anxious and unquiet at the non-arrival of the boats that had accompanied him to Alexandria. In constant fear of an uprising of the people of the country, he was eager to get back to the ships. As soon therefore as night set in, he resolved to commence his retreat. To prevent pursuit, an order was issued prohibiting the appearance of a single inhabitant in the street after eight o'clock. At nine, in dead silence, and with quick step, as though stealing on a sleeping foe, the advance column took up its march and passed unnoticed out of the city. The camp fires on the hill of the capitol were kept blazing, and piled with fuel sufficient to preserve them bright till near morning, in order to convey the impression that the army was still there, and at a late hour the rear column followed after, and silently and rapidly traversed the road to Bladensburg. Not a word was spoken, not a man allowed to step out of his place. Arriving on the ground which had been occupied by other brigades, they found it deserted, but the fires were still blazing as though the encampment had not been broken up. Approaching the field of Bladensburg, they saw in the white moonbeams the whiter corpses of the unburied dead, who had been stripped of their clothing and now lay scattered around on the green slope and banks of the stream where they had fallen. The hot August rain and sun had already begun to act on the mutilated flesh, and a horrible stench loaded the midnight air. Stopping there for an hour, to enable the soldiers to hunt up their knapsacks thrown aside the day before, Ross again hurried them forward, and kept them at the top of their speed all night. If the column paused for a moment, the road was instantly filled with soldiers fast asleep. Men were constantly straggling away, or falling into slumbers, from which even the sword could with difficulty prick