We cannot look forward, however, without apprehension--apprehension not from the possible defeat of our arms--they will be too strong, too efficient for defeat by any Chinese forces--but from their successful advance and overthrow of all resistance. Nothing can arrest their course to Peking, nor prevent the capture of that vast capital; but its possession may prove our great embarrassment. If the emperor, accompanied by his court, should retreat into Manchuria--if Peking be deserted, as Canton was, by all that is respectable and opulent--the Allies may find themselves amidst vacant streets, abandoned houses, a wandering, a starving population, too poor to migrate with their betters. Winter will come--the cruel, bitter winter of northern China; the rivers will be frozen, communications cut off; and with no war-ship in the Gulf of Pecheli, supplies must be inaccessible. Peking may even prove another Moscow to its conquerors. The condition of the French and Spanish expedition in Cochin China is full of present instruction. They are acting against a miserable and despised enemy. They have been for more than a year in possession of Turon, the principal harbour of the country; but they have not ventured to attack the adjacent capital. Disease has thinned their ranks; victories have brought no results, but ever new disappointment: every calculation of success having been thwarted by a patient but stubborn “no surrender.” It is a resistance that cannot be reached by strength of arms, nor dealt with by the cunning of diplomacy. May it serve as a warning in that wider field upon which we are entering in China! How is the social edifice to be constructed out of crumbling ruins? To overthrow the existing dynasty of China may be easy enough; indeed, the difficulty, as with that of Turkey, is its maintenance and preservation: its very feebleness cries to us for pity and mercy. It may yet totter on for generations, if not harshly shaken; but if it--fall--fall amidst its wrecked institutions--China, inviting as it is to foreign ambition and the lust of conquest, may become the battle-field of contending interests. Russia, moving steadily and stealthily forward in its march of territorial aggression; France, charged with what she fancies herself specially called upon to represent--the missionary propagand, with the Catholic world behind her; England, with those vast concerns which involve about one-ninth of the imperial and Indian revenues, and an invested capital exceeding forty millions sterling; and the United States, whose commerce may be deemed about one-third of that of Great Britain, to say nothing of Holland and Spain, who are not a little concerned, through their eastern colonies, in the well-being of China;--will then be engaged in a struggle for power, if not territory, the result of which cannot be anticipated; indeed we scarcely venture to contemplate such portentous complications.