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.