ctual force was employed, representations were repeated to the
French government, but the ministers of the king of France would neither
promise due satisfaction, nor uphold a strenuous opposition. They showed
a sulky disregard of every application. A deputation from the
Netherlands formally claimed the Dutch and Flemish pictures taken during
the revolutionary wars from those countries; and this demand was
conveyed through the Duke of Wellington, as commander-in-chief of the
Dutch and Belgian armies. About the same time, also, Austria determined
that her Italian and German towns, which had been despoiled, should have
their property replaced, and Canova, the anxious representative of Rome,
after many fruitless appeals to Talleyrand, received assurances that he,
too, should be furnished with an armed force sufficient to protect him
in taking back to that venerable city, what lost its highest value in
its removal from thence.

"Contradicting reports continued to prevail among the crowds of
strangers and natives as to the intentions of the allies, but on
Saturday, the 23d of September, all doubt was removed. On going up to
the door of the Louvre, I found a guard of one hundred and fifty British
riflemen drawn up outside. I asked one of the soldiers what they were
there for? 'Why, they tell me, sir, that they mean to take away the
pictures,' was his reply. I walked in amongst the statues below, and on
going to the great staircase, I saw the English guard hastily trampling
up its magnificent ascent: a crowd of astonished French followed in the
rear, and, from above, many of the visitors in the gallery of pictures
were attempting to force their way past the ascending soldiers,
catching an alarm from their sudden entrance. The alarm, however, was
unfounded; but the spectacle that presented itself was very impressive.
A British officer dropped his men in files along this magnificent
gallery, until they extended, two and two, at small distances, from its
entrance to its extremity. All the spectators were breathless, in
eagerness to know what was to be done, but the soldiers stopped as
machines, having no care beyond obedience to their orders.

"The work of removal now commenced in good earnest: porters with
barrows, and ladders, and tackles of ropes made their appearance. The
collection of the Louvre might from that moment be considered as broken
up for ever. The sublimity of its orderly aspect vanished: it took now
the melanchol