scattered the fragments along the floor. A wild shout succeeded, and
then the work which seemed delegated to a comparatively small number of
the assembled crowd, went on with incredible celerity. Some were armed
with axes, some with bludgeons, some with sledge-hammers; others brought
ladders, pulleys, ropes, and levers. Every statue was hurled from its
niche, every picture torn from the wall, every wonderfully-painted window
shivered to atoms, every ancient monument shattered, every sculptured
decoration, however inaccessible in appearance, hurled to the ground.
Indefatigably, audaciously,--endowed, as it seemed, with preternatural
strength and nimbleness, these furious iconoclasts clambered up the dizzy
heights, shrieking and chattering like malignant apes, as they tore off
in triumph the slowly-matured fruit of centuries. In a space of time
wonderfully brief, they had accomplished their task.

A colossal and magnificent group of the Saviour crucified between two
thieves adorned the principal altar. The statue of Christ was wrenched
from its place with ropes and pulleys, while the malefactors, with bitter
and blasphemous irony, were left on high, the only representatives of the
marble crowd which had been destroyed. A very beautiful piece of
architecture decorated the choir,--the "repository," as it was called,
in which the body of Christ was figuratively enshrined. This much-
admired work rested upon a single column, but rose, arch upon arch,
pillar upon pillar, to the height of three hundred feet, till quite lost
in the vault above. "It was now shattered into a million pieces." The
statues, images, pictures, ornaments, as they lay upon the ground, were
broken with sledge-hammers, hewn with axes, trampled, torn; and beaten
into shreds. A troop of harlots, snatching waxen tapers from the altars,
stood around the destroyers and lighted them at their work. Nothing
escaped their omnivorous rage. They desecrated seventy chapels, forced
open all the chests of treasure, covered their own squalid attire with