ashore yesterday, within a stone's-throw of the town of Canton, and the officer had the coolness to call on a crowd of Chinese, who were on the quays, to pull her off, which they at once did! Fancy having to fight such people! _Christmas Day_.--Who would have thought, when we were spending that cold snowy Christmas Day last year at Howick, that _this_ day would find us separated by almost as great a distance as is possible on the surface of our globe! and that I should be anchored, as I now am, within two miles of a great city, doomed, I fear, to destruction, from the folly of its own rulers and the vanity and levity of ours. We have moved a little farther up the river this morning, and as we are, like St. Paul, dropping an anchor from the stern, I have had over my head for several hours the incessant dancing about and clanking of a ponderous chain-cable, till my brains are nearly all shaken out of their place. _December 26th._--I have a second letter from Yeh, which is even more twaddling than the first. They say that he is all day engaged in sacrificing to an idol, which represents the God of Physic, and which is so constructed that a stick in its hand traces figures on sand. In the figures so traced he is supposed to read his fate. Early on Monday the 28th the attack began; and Lord Elgin was reluctantly compelled to witness what he had been reluctantly compelled to order--the bombardment of an unresisting town. Happily the damage both to life and property proved to be very much less serious than at the time he supposed it to be. [Sidenote: Bombardment.] _December 28th, Noon._--We have been throwing shells, etc., into Canton since 6 A.M., without almost any reply from the town. I hate the whole thing so much, that I cannot trust myself to write about it. _December 29th._--The mail was put off, and I add a line to say that I hope the Canton affair is over, and well over.... When I say this affair is over, perhaps I say too much. But the horrid bombardment has ceased, and we are in occupation of Magazine Hill, at the upper part of the city, within the walls. [Sidenote: Capture of the city.] [Sidenote: Looting.]