torn from the breast of a gallant French officer, and
other effects belonging to the prisoners. As almost all the valuables
had already been taken from the palace, the army would go there, not
to pillage, but to mark, by a solemn act of retribution, the horror
and indignation with which we were inspired by the perpetration of a
great crime. The punishment was one which would fall, not on the
people, who may be comparatively innocent, but exclusively on the
Emperor, whose direct personal responsibility for the crime committed
is established, not only by the treatment of the prisoners at Yuen-
ming-yuen, but also by the edict, in which he offered a pecuniary
reward for the heads of the foreigners, adding, that he was ready to
expend all his treasure in these wages of assassination.

On Thursday, the 18th of October, the extensive buildings of the palace
were given to the flames; and during the whole of the 19th they were still
burning. 'The clouds of smoke,' says Mr. Loch, 'driven by the wind, hung
like a vast black pall over Pekin;' well calculated to enforce with their
lurid gloom the lesson conveyed to the citizens in a proclamation which
Lord Elgin had caused to be affixed in Chinese to all the buildings and
walls in the neighbourhood, to the effect 'that no individual, however
exalted, could escape from the responsibility and punishment which must
always follow the commission of acts of treachery and deceit; and that
Yuen-ming-yuen was burnt as a punishment inflicted on the Emperor for the
violation of his word, and the act of treachery to a flag of truce.'

[Sidenote: Convention signed.]

Five days later, on the 24th of October, the Convention, which had been the
subject of so much dispute, was finally signed, and Lord Elgin exchanged
with the Emperor's brother the ratifications of the Treaty of Tientsin.

_Camp near Pekin.--October 26th._--This will be one of the shortest
letters which you have received from me since we parted, and yet
perhaps it will not be the one which you will welcome the least,
because it will convey to you the news that I have signed my treaty,
and that the specific object for which I came out is therefore
accomplished. I have not written my daily journal lately, because it
would have been filled with my difficulties. ... However, I have
succeeded at last in a sort of way. Loch is going home with the
treaty, an