Cultural Geography Scrapbook

PUBLISHERS' NOTICE.

THE object of this work is to furnish a Geographical and Historical View of the World in a condensed form, suited, as a Book of Reference, to the use of Families, Merchants, Editors, Travelers, and the great mass of general readers.

The Author is the oldest, and, universally acknowledged, one of the most entertaining and reliable Geographers and Historians now living. Under the name of Peter Parley he is very favorably known to the masses of society, and his writings are "Familiar in their mouths as household words." This is his last, best work, in which he gives, in connection with the Geography of the World, an interesting and authentic History of Every Important Event that has transpired from the Earliest Ages to the Present Time.

It contains 272 quarto pages, illustrated with 200 Engravings, and 80 Maps of divisions, sub-divisions, and cities, prepared expressly for this work, and given in connection with the text which they illustrate.

It gives valuable statistics of the different countries up to the present time, not elsewhere to be found.

It contains the last Census of the United States, attached separately to the Geography and History of Each State.

The whole matter is arranged in a convenient and systematic form, for easy reference, the headings of the different subjects being in large type, so as to immediately attract the eye.

It contains a Geographical Description of every country on the globe.

It gives a Historical Outline of every country, Ancient as well as Modern. It contains an Outline of the Ancient Geography of every country, illustrated by full Ancient Maps.

When the mind is filled with a geographical [cut away]tion of a country, a curiosity to know its histo[cut away]riably arises; and under the excitement the latter[cut away] with vivid interest. The impression is therefore [cut away] and likely to be durable; the history serving, b[cut away] associations, to rivet the geography more firmly [cut away] memory. When reading the geographical acc[cut away] Mesopotamia, for instance, to learn in the same [cut away]tion that this is the country where the descen[cut away] Noah dwelt—that here was the Tower of Ba[cut away] the confusion of Tongues—that here was the [cut away] Babylon, founded by Nimrod, embellished by Se[cut away] perfected by Nebuchadnezzar, and conquered b[cut away]ander, will certainly add an interest to the subj[cut away] tend to impress the facts permanently upon th[cut away] We are never satisfied with learning what a co[cut away] without knowing how it became what it is; w[cut away] look upon a scene but the inquiry arises, "What ha[cut away]pired there?"

It is believed that no work has ever before co[cut away] these advantages of numerous maps in immediate [cut away] with the description of countries to which they [cut away] with the union of History and Geography—and [cut away] topics systematically and conspicuously arranged [cut away]venient reference.

In the back part is a copious Index, containing [cut away] Geographical and Historical Names in the wor[cut away] the pages upon which they are respectively tre[cut away] placed directly opposite, and the names divided [cut away]cented, so as to form a systematic and accurat[cut away]graphical and Historical Pronouncing Dictionary.

It is, unquestionably, one of the most valuable [cut away] for the library that has ever been issued. It has r[cut away] the highest encomiums of scientific men in Eur[cut away] America, as well as the most flattering notices of the [cut away]

[cut away]ANCIENT AND MODERN

Dr. Boynton's Second Lecture.

Dr. Boynton gave the second of his brilliant course of lectures last night, to another large audience, at the Atheneum, every seat being occupied, and the aisles and gallery crowded. He commenced the history of the earth's formation by showing that there was no discrepancy between Genesis and Geology. The earth was at first a melted mass of rock, produced by chemical action and condensation. Wherever there is a combination of different elements heat is produced. This melted mass, suspended in space, and surrounded by a cold atmosphere, began to cool and form an outer solid crust. This crust composed the granite rock, and was crystalized in cooling. When the earth was in this highly heated condition, the water now on its surface was driven off and existed in the form of vapor: hence the vapor would obscure the central mass and "darkness would be upon the face of the deep." As the earth cooled and formed a crust, this vapor condensed and formed the waters of the oceans. All bodies contract by cooling: the crust of the earth by cooling, contracted, forming wrinkles, producing elevations and depressions. This contraction was illustrated by a wand, which being held in both hands and bent like a bow, when one portion was pressed towards the centre an opposite elevation was produced. By this process and the pressure produced by this contraction on melted masses in the interior of the earth, these melted masses must find vent—hence the bursting out of volcanoes, and the elevation of continents and lands.

If we bury a thermometer fifty feet below the surface of the earth, the mercury will remain at the same point the year round, in winter and in summer, showing that the influence of the sun does not reach below that depth. If we carry the thermometer fifty feet lower, the mercury will rise one degree, and will rise in the same ratio for every fifty feet we go down. It can easily be calculate at what depth all known substances will melt. This would not exceed fifty miles. It was Dr. Boynton's own opinion that the crust did not exceed fifteen miles. It will thus be seen that the crust (or solid part) of the earth is exceedingly thin, in proportion to the size of the egg. With a crust so thin, constantly cooling and producing a pressure upon the interior masses, it is not strange that the bed of oceans should be elevated and form dry land, and continents should sink and form the beds of oceans. As to the depth of seas and oceans, in proportion to the general diameter of the earth, it was not more than would be the vapor left by breathing once on a metal globe 80 inches in diameter. Large mountains have been elevated in a single day, and whole cities have been sunk in the same space of time: The side of a volcanic mountain once broke away, and the liquid mass flowed out, forming a river twelve miles wide, which in its course melted down hills six hundred feet high and filling up valleys six hundred feet deep, and spreading over a surface of eleven hundred square miles.

On the Island of Owyhee there is a volcano now in active operation, the crater of which is three miles wide. In illustration of the subject, Dr. Boynton exhibited three beautiful paintings—the first of which was that of a volcano bursting from the water in the Mediterranean; the second was the same volcano with the fires gone out; the last was the great volcano of Owyhee. These were exceedingly beautiful, and elicited hearty applause from all present. The next lecture will be given tomorrow night.

which a certain check would be placed on the abuse of privilege.

The same reasons do not apply to the provision in regard to the previous residence of the parties within the district. On the contrary, it seems very necessary to prevent the sudden irruption of a couple into the district of the Registrar, for no purpose but that of marriage—and for this reason, among others, that if parties resident at a distance, and utterly unknown to the neighbourhood before or afterwards, were entitled to use the Register, the benefit of its publicity would be, to a great extent, neutralized, and it would not afford the necessary protection against double marriages.

We had intended to close these remarks by an account of the proposed system of Registration of Births, Deaths, and Marriages, and the machinery contemplated by the statute. But our limits are already exhausted. We shall onl[illegible] observe in leaving the subject, that we hope that both the details and the principles of these measures will be extensively and thoroughly canvassed. There may perhaps be various points of expression, arrangement, or enactment, in which they admit of improvement. We are not without the hope that our next County Meetings, and General Assemblies, will be found quietly canvassing the details of a great national question, with a single and patriotic desire for the social welfare of the people, unterrified by the shadows of coming assessments, or the bugbear of the imagined influence of dissent. It is a subject on which both classes are well entitled to be heard, and to have their deliberate and temperate opinions considered with attention and respect. But if they sink the influence they should possess, in unreasoning and ignorant clamour, they cannot wonder, if stranded by the passing current of public opinion and enlightened legislation, they find their remonstrances fall unheeded on the wearied ears of public men, and their narrow conceptions turned into weapons against them, by those who wish their downfal.

IN the history of Astronomical Discovery there shine no brighter names than those of Sir William and Sir John Herschel—the father and the son. It is rare that the intellectual mantle of the parent lights upon the child. By no culture, however skilful, and no anxieties, however earnest, can we transmit to our successors the qualities or the capacities of the mind. The eagle eye, the active limb, the giant frame, and the "form divine,"—the gifts of our mortal being, are frequently conveyed by natural descent, and may be numbered even among the rights of primogeniture; but the higher developments of reason and fancy, the bright coruscations of the soul, have never been ranked among the claims or the accidents of birth. The gifts of fortune which we inherit or acquire, have been placed more immediately at our disposal, and in many cases have been handed down unimpaired to distant generations; but Providence has reserved for its own distribution, those transcendental powers which give omnipotence to genius, and constitute its possessor the high priest of nature, or the vicegerent of Heaven. In a destiny so lofty, the father and the son have been rarely associated; and in the very few cases in which a joint commission has been issued to them, it has generally been to work in different spheres, or at different levels. In the universe of mind, the phenomenon of a double star is more rare than its prototype in the firmament, and when it does appear we watch its phases and its mutations with a corresponding interest. The case of the two Herschels is a remarkable one, and may appear an exception to our general law. The father, however, was not called to the survey of the heavens till he had passed the middle period of life, and it was but a just arrangement, that the son, in his youth and manhood, should continue and complete the labours of his sire. The records of Astronomy do not emblazon a more glorious day than that, in which the semidiurnal arc of the father was succeeded by the semidiurnal arc of the son. No sooner had the evening luminary disappeared amid the gorgeous magnificence of the west, than the morning star arose, bright and cloudless in its appointed course.

It has long been a subject of regret to the astronomical world, that in our language no extended account has yet been published of the life and discoveries of Sir William Herschel. With the exception of a short Biographical Memoir, * and a popular abstract of his astronomical observations on

and by means of a micrometer for taking the angle of position, described at the end of the paper, he obtained measures of its angle of position with the same fixed star. Although M. Messier, to whom Mr. Herschel communicated his observations, and who had with some difficulty observed it, speaks of it in his reply as a star or a comet, yet neither of them suspected it to be a planet. Mr. Herschel, indeed, himself speaks of it as "a moving star, which he was happy to surrender to the care of the Astronomer Royal and others."

Before the close of the year 1781, Mr. Herschel, in a letter to Sir Joseph Banks, announced to the Royal Society, that, "by the observations of the most eminent astronomers in Europe, the new star which he had the honour of pointing out to them in March, 1781, is a primary planet of our Solar System;" and in gratitude to his Majesty George III., "to whose unlimited bounty he owed everything," he gave it the name of the GEORGIUM SIDUS, a compliment which astronomers in every part of the world have refused to pay. La Lande, and others, gave it the more appropriate name of Herschel; but the uniformity of astronomical nomenclature demanded another name, and the appellation of Uranus, sanctioned by more recent discussions, was given to the new planet.

This important discovery, by which the limits of the Solar System were extended to nearly double their former amount, was hailed by the astronomers of every country, and the highest expectations were formed of the future labours of Mr. Herschel. The Royal Society of London elected him a Fellow of their body. His Majesty George III. did himself the honour of granting him a salary of £300 a year, so as to enable him to devote his time to astronomical research; and all the scientific bodies in Europe successively admitted him into the list of their members.

With the fine telescopes in his possession, Mr. Herschel began, in October, 1781, to make a series of observations on the light, diameter, and magnitude of the new planet; and in his paper on this subject read at the Royal Society on the 7th December, 1782, he described the dark and lucid disc and periphery micrometers by which these observations were made. With this apparatus, by means of which one eye, looking into the telescope, throws the magnified image of a planet or comet upon, or near, lucid discs seen by the other eye, he found the diameter of the Georgium Sidus to be four seconds; and from the distance of the planet from the Sun, as calculated and sent to him by La Lande (18˙913—that of the Earth being 1), he found its diameter to be 4˙454 times that of the earth.

The researches of Mr. Herschel on the Parallax of the Fixed Stars, which we have already mentioned, were chiefly of a speculative nature, and the result of them was published in the Philosophical Transactions for 1782. The method first pointed out by Galileo, and followed by Flamstead and Bradley, of measuring the zenith distances of two stars, was regarded by Mr. Herschel as liable to various sources of error; and he was of opinion that though Bradley regarded the maximum parallax as not exceeding 1", yet "the stars of the first magnitude might still have a parallax of several seconds." The method which he substituted, and which had been originally suggested by Galileo, in his Systema Cosmicum, consisted in employing two stars as near to each other as possible, and differing as much in magnitude as could be found, and determining their exact place at the two opposite points of the earth's annual orbit. The parallax of the stars was then to be computed by a theory founded on probabilities, and involving the two postulates: 1. That the stars are, "one with another, about the size of the sun; and, 2. That the difference of their apparent magnitudes is owing to their different distances;" so that a star of the second, third, or fourth magnitude is two, three, or four times as far off as one of the first. This method, ingenious as it is, has not led to any results on which confidence can be placed. The postulates which it involves were contrary to all analogy, and have been completely disproved by the only measures of parallax which have been recently obtained. But, like many other speculations, the attempt to prove or to apply them led to results more important than those which they directly contemplated. In searching for double stars suitable for his purpose, Mr. Herschel was led to the formation of those magnificent catalogues of double stars by which he enriched astronomy, and those interesting results respecting the movements and periods of binary systems, which now form the most interesting portion of sidereal astronomy.

To us who are in possession of the researches on double stars, which we owe to Mr. Herschel and his son, to Sir James South and M. Struve, it is interesting to mark the first steps in this great inquiry. "I took pains," says Mr. Herschel, "to find out what double stars have been recorded by astronomers; but my situation permitted me not to consult extensive libraries, nor indeed was it very

material. For as I intended to view the heavens myself, Nature—that great volume—appeared to me to contain the best catalogue upon this occasion. However, I remembered that the star in the head of Castor, that in the breast of the Virgin, and the first star in Aries, had been mentioned by Cassini as double stars. I also found that the nebula in Orion was marked in Huygens' Systema Saturnium as containing seven stars, three of which (now known to be four) are very near together. With this small stock I began, and, in the course of a few years' observations, have collected the stars contained in my catalogue. I find, with great pleasure, that a very excellent observer (Mr. Pigott) has also, though unknown to me, met with three of those stars that will be found in my catalogue; and upon this occasion, I also beg leave to observe, that the Astronomer-Royal showed me, among other objects, a Hercules as a double-star, which he had discovered some years ago. The Rev. Mr. Hornsby also, in a conversation on the subject of the stars that have a proper motion, mentioned π Bootis as a double star. It is a little hard upon young astronomers to be obliged to discover over again what has already been discovered. However, the pleasure that attended the view when I first saw these stars, has made some amends for not knowing they had been seen before me." *

Mr. Herschel's first Catalogue of Double Stars was read at the Royal Society on the 10th January, 1787. It contains 269 double stars, 227 of which had not been noticed by any other person. It gives the comparative size of the stars, their colour, their distances (as measured by a Lamp Micrometer, † exhibiting two movable lights, with whose distance seen by the unassisted eye the distance of the stars seen in the telescope was compared), their angle of position, and the dates of the observation. The catalogue, which is divided into six classes, contains not only double stars, but also those that are triple, double-double, quadruple, double-triple, and multiple.

Mr. Herschel had now removed to Datchet, near Windsor, where he carried on his observations under the immediate patronage of the King, with new zeal and corresponding success. Towards the end of 1782, he completed his interesting paper—"On the proper motion of the Sun and the Solar System, with an account of several changes that have happened among the fixed stars since the time of Mr. Flamstead." In this paper, he notices, 1. The stars that have been lost, or undergone some capital change since Flamstead’s time; 2. Those that have changed their magnitude; 3. Those that have newly become visible; and the results which he obtained were drawn from a review of all the stars in Flamstead's catalogue, as far as the 12th magnitude, "to the amount of a great many thousands of stars." Those changes which arise from a proper motion of the star, and a variation of magnitude, he suspects may be owing to every star in the heavens being more or less in motion; some, especially in slow motions, arising from their revolving around a large opaque body,—the stars undergoing occasional occultation, or presenting to us large spots in their rotatory movements. Hence he is led to believe, what Tobias Mayer had previously maintained, that the Sun and Solar System have analogous motions, and are advancing to a certain part of the heavens; and he found that this part was in the constellation Hercules, near the star λ, or a point somewhat further to the north.

Having finished in the year 1783, a very good twenty-feet reflector, with a large aperture, he employed it in studying the remarkable luminous spots at the pole of the planet Mars; and he published the results of his observations in the Philosophical Transactions of 1784. By means of these spots, he found that the axis of Mars was inclined to the ecliptic 59° 42', and that its node was in 17° 47' of Pisces, and he determined the ratio of its polar and equatorial diameters to be as 15 to 16.

Towards the end of 1784, Mr. Herschel completed a second catalogue, containing 434 double stars; and in June, 1784, and February, 1785, he communicated to the Royal Society two papers "On the Construction of the Heavens." By means of his twenty feet telescope, with an aperture of 18 7-10 inches, and placed meridionally, he resolved into stars the nebulæ discovered by Messier and Mechain, and also part of the Milky Way; and he discovered no fewer than 466 new nebulae and clusters of stars, which were not within the reach of the best common telescopes then in use. In pursuing these observations, he was led to the remarkable speculation, founded wholly on optical considerations, that as the Milky Way "seemed to encompass the whole heavens," it might be regarded as an immense cluster of stars; and that our sun, with his system of planets, was in all probability placed within it, but "perhaps not in the very centre of its thickness." In order to determine the sun's place in this sidereal stratum, he gauged the heavens, or ascer-

image of every considerable star became triangular, throwing out long flaming caustics at the angles. Having on one occasion supported the speculum simply against a flat-board, at an elevation of about 45°, he found that its performance was tolerably good; but on stretching a thin pack-thread vertically down the middle of the board, so as to bring the weight of the metal to rest upon this thread, the images of stars were lengthened horizontally "to a preposterous extent, and all distinct vision utterly destroyed by the division of the mirror into two lobes, each retaining something of its parabolic figure, separated by a vertical band in a state of distortion, and of no figure at all!" The method which Sir John found the best was the following:—Between the mirror and the back of the case he interposed 6 or 8 folds of thick woollen baize, or blanketing, of uniform thickness and texture, stitched together at their edges. The metal, when laid flat on this bed, was shaken so as to be concentric with the rim of the case, and two supports, composed of several strips of similar baize, were introduced so as to occupy about 30° each, and to leave an arc of about 40° unoccupied opposite the point which was to be the lowermost in the tube. When the case is raised into an inclined position, and slightly shaken, the mirror takes its own free bearing on these supports, and preserves its figure. It is essential, however, to the successful application of this method that many thicknesses of the baize or blanket should be employed, by which only the effect of flexure in the wooden back itself of the case can be eliminated." As the woollen fibres, however, lose their elasticity, the baize should be occasionally taken out, and beaten or shaken up. ✺

In conducting his observations with these fine instruments, Sir John Herschel observed several curious optical effects, arising from peculiar conditions of the atmosphere, incident to the climate of the Cape. In the hot season, from October to March, but particularly during the latter months of that season, "the nights are for the most part superb" at a few miles' distance from the mountains; but occasionally during the excessive heat and dryness of the sandy plains, the "optical tranquillity of the air" is greatly disturbed. In some cases the images of the stars are violently dilated into nebular balls or puffs of upwards of 15´ in diameter. At the end of March, 1834, for example, when Saturn and γ Virginis were both in the field of the 20 feet reflector, "it could not have been told which was the planet and which the star." On other occasions, the stars form "soft, quiet, round pellets of 3´ or 4´ diameter, resembling planetary nebulæ, and quite unlike the spurious discs which they present when not defined. In other cases, these pellets are seen to arise "from an infinitely rapid vibratory movement of the central point in all possible directions," the luminous discs presenting singular phenomena when thrown out of focus, by pushing the eye-piece further in or pulling it further out than its principal focus. *

In the cooler months, from May to October, and especially in June and July, the state of the air is habitually good, and after heavy rains have ceased for a day or two, the tranquillity of the image and the sharpness of vision, is such, that hardly any limit is set to magnifying power, but that which arises from the aberration of the specula. On occasions like these, optical phenomena of extraordinary splendour are produced by viewing a bright star through diaphragms of card-board or zinc, pierced in regular patterns of circular holes by machinery. These phenomena, arising from the interferences of the intromitted rays, and produced less perfectly in a moderate state of the air, surprise and delight every person that sees them. A result of a more valuable kind is obtained when the aperture of the telescope has the form of an equilateral triangle, the centre of which coincides with the centre of the speculum. When close double stars are viewed with the telescope, having a diaphragm of this form, the discs of the two stars which are exact circles, are reduced to about a third of their size, and have a clearness and perfection almost incredible. These discs, however, are accompanied with six luminous radiations running from them at angles of 60°, forming perfectly straight, delicate, brilliant lines, like brightly illuminated threads, running far out beyond the field of view, and, what is singular, capable of being followed like real appendages to the star long after the star itself has left the field. Another optical phenomenon, arising from a peculiar condition of the atmosphere, is described by Sir John Herschel as a "nebulous haze." The effect of it is to encircle every star, of the 9th magnitude and upwards,

with a faint sphere of light of an extent proportioned to the brightness of the star. This phenomenon presents itself very suddenly in a perfectly clear sky, free from the slightest suspicion of cloud, and disappears as suddenly, lasting sometimes only for one or two minutes. Sir John Herschel states that similar nebular affections occur in our English climate, but with much less frequency and suddenness in their appearance and disappearance. He at first suspected that the phenomena arose from dew upon the eye-piece, but repeated examination satisfied him that its origin was really atmospheric. In studying the polarization of the atmosphere, the writer of this article has had occasion frequently to observe what appears to be the result of the same cause. When the sky was of a fine blue colour, and free from clouds, and the degree of polarization, as indicated by the Polarimeter, ✺ very great, a sudden change frequently took place without any apparent cause; sometimes near the horizon and not at considerable altitudes, and sometimes at considerable altitudes and not near the horizon. On some occasions the effect was limited in its extent, and of a temporary kind. When it was not temporary, it showed itself in a diminution of the blue tint of the sky, which is invariably accompanied with a diminished polarization, and the whiteness of the sky often increased till clouds were produced, terminating in rain. The cause of these phenomena was doubtless a sudden secretion of aqueous vapour, sometimes local and of a limited extent, and quickly re-absorbed; and at other times general, and terminating in a change of weather. When a cloud passed over a track of perfectly blue sky, without occasioning any perceptible diminution of tint, the polarization of the part of the sky over which it passed was always diminished, owing, no doubt, to its having left in its path a quantity of aqueous vapour.

The description of phenomena, and the tabulated observations contained in the interesting volume now before us, occupy seven chapters, extending over 450 closely printed pages, and are illustrated with seventeen beautifully executed plates, some of which are of a very great size. The valuable contents of these different chapters would doubtless have appeared in a series of unconnected memoirs in the Transactions of the Royal or Astronomical Societies, and

with illustrations very inferior, both in number and quality, had it not been for the munificence of his Grace the late Duke of Northumberland, who destined a large sum for their publication as a single and separate work. This very amiable and public-spirited nobleman, to whom the Observatory at Cambridge owes the gift of the splendid Northumberland achromatic telescope, through which the new planet Neptune was first seen, did not live to witness the final fulfilment of his noble and generous design; but the present Duke, the worthy heir of the titles and the fortune of that distinguished nobleman, carried out, in the fullest manner, the liberal intentions of his lamented brother, and thus added another claim to those which, as Lord Prudhoe, he had already earned, upon the gratitude and esteem of the literary and scientific world.

The following are the subjects which are treated in the volume under our notice:—

Chap. I. On the nebulæ and clusters of stars in the southern hemisphere.

II. On the double stars of the southern hemisphere.

III. Of astrometry, or the numerical expression of the apparent magnitude of stars.

IV. Of the distribution of stars, and of the constitution of the galaxy, or Milky Way, in the southern hemisphere.

V. Observations of Halley's Comet, with remarks on its physical condition, and that of comets in general.

VI. Observations on the Satellites of Saturn.

VII. Observations on the Solar spots.

In the first chapter, on Nebulæ and Clusters of Stars, occupying 164 pages, our author proceeds, after some introductory and explanatory remarks, to give detailed descriptions and monographs of some of the more remarkable of the nebulæ. As some of these nebulae are visible in Europe, and are all objects of singular interest, we shall lay before our readers a very brief notice of the most important of them.

No. 1. This remarkable nebula, which is a nebular line, with the figure of a horseshoe at each end of it, has been observed and drawn by Mr. Mason, and American astronomer, and Mr. Lamont, a native of

possible so to view them." Our author was always satisfied of the reality of this phenomenon at the moment of observation, though the conviction was not permanent, the idea of an illusion arising from physiological causes having subsequently arisen. Sir John has, however, given the right ascension and north polar distance of 37 points of the heavens where this whiteness, or "stippling of the ground of the sky" was seen or suspected. In like manner, he has given the places of the points where the ground of the sky is perfectly dark or black, and "certainly devoid of any such stippling or nebulous phenomenon.

On the 25th of October, 1837, Sir John was fortunate enough to obtain a view of the anxiously expected comet of Dr. Halley, and in his fifth chapter, occupying 21 pages, and constituting, in our opinion, one of the most interesting portions of his work, he has given his observations on this singular member of the solar system, illustrating them with thirteen beautiful drawings of it, and adding some curious speculations on its physical condition, and on that of comets in general. On the 29th October, its appearance was most singular, and such as he had never observed in any previous comet. Its nucleus small, bright, and highly condensed, was shielded or capped on the side next the sun by a vivid but narrow crescent of nebulous light, the front of which presented an outline nearly circular, with an amplitude of about 90° from horn to horn. Within this was situated the nucleus, but at a distance behind the front or vertex of the crescent, considerably less than its versed sine. ✺ On the 1st of November, it had the common appearance of a comet, with its nucleus and slightly diverging tail; but on the 26th January, after its return from the sun, it had assumed a most surprising and totally new appearance. Its head was sharply terminated, like a ground glass-lamp shade; and within this head was seen "a vividly luminous nucleus," like “a miniature comet, having a nucleus head and tail of its own, perfectly distinct, and considerably exceeding in intensity of light the nebulous head." As the comet rose higher, a minute bright point, never greater than 4ʺ, and like a small star, was distinctly perceived, and this point Sir John calls the nucleus. On the 25th January, the following measures were taken:—

Upon repeating these observations in the "strong morning twilight," the results were—

The deficiency in this second measure of the head obviously arose from the effect of twilight; but we can only account for the increase in declination by concluding "that the change was real, and that the comet was actually increasing in dimensions with such rapidity that it might almost be said to be seen to grow!" M. Valz had pointed out the increase in the dimensions of comets as they receded from the sun, but an increase in the ratio of 5 to 6, and in so short an interval, must be regarded as a different phenomenon. On the 26th, the nucleus appeared as a star of the 10th magnitude, furred and nebulous; and the dimensions of the comet had greatly increased, the diameter in right ascension being 309ʺ, and in declination 329ʺ, so that the total bulk of the comet, exclusive of the coma, had greatly more than doubled in 24 hours. On the 28th January, upon looking through the 20 feet reflector, Sir John exclaims—"Most astonishing! The coma is all but gone, but there are long irregular nebulous tails in various directions." The nucleus is now no longer a dim misty speck, but a sharp brilliant point. I cannot, however, raise a well-defined disc on it." "It is like a planetary nebula, a little hazy at the edges, 2ʺ or 2½ʺ in diameter." "I now see a sharp, all but planetary disc, diameter fully 1½ʺ, quite distinct from the haze about it. It is like one of Jupiter's satellites in a thick fog of hazy light." "I can hardly doubt," Sir John adds, "that the comet was fairly evaporated in perihelio by the sun's heat, and resolved into transparent vapour, and is now in process of rapid condensation and re-precipitation on the nucleus." The comet resumed its former size on the 29th, and afterwards gradually disappeared as it receded from the sun. Sir John notices the following points as especially remarkable:—

1st. The astonishingly rapid dilatation of its visible dimensions.

2d. The preservation of the same geometrical form of the dilated and dilating envelope.

3d. The rapid disappearance of the coma; and

4th. The increase in the density and relative brightness of the nucleus.

Our limits will not permit us to discuss the speculative views which these phenomena have suggested to our author. He rejects the hypothesis of Valz, that the volume of the comet is directly proportional to its distance from the sun. He maintains that the laws of gravitation are insufficient to account for such a form of equilibrium as that of the comet, which was paraboloidal, and that such a form, as one of equilibrium, is inconceivable without the admission of repulsive as well as of attractive forces. "But if we admit," he adds, "the matter of the tail to be at once repelled from the sun and attracted by the nucleus, it no longer presents any difficulty." In order to obtain the repulsive power, Sir John hazards a theory which supposes the sun to be permanently charged with electricity. The cometic matters vaporized by the sun's heat, in perihelio, the two electricities separated by vaporization, the nucleus becoming negative and the tail positive, and the electricity of the sun directing the tail, in the same manner as a positively electrified body would an elongated non-conducting body, having one end positively, and the other negatively excited. The separation of Biela's comet into two, travelling side by side, like the Siamese twins, presents a new difficulty which it would not be easy to explain. But here we are beyond our depth; and rather than admit Electricity as an agent residing in every sun and acting upon every system, we remain content with the humbler supposition that the rays of the sun may, in the exercise of their chemical and physical influences, find some ingredients in the tails of comets, upon which, by their joint action, they may generate forces capable of producing the phenomena which we have been considering. If we once admit Magnetism and Electricity as agents in our Sidereal systems, the Mesmerists and Phrenologists will form an alliance with the Astrologer, and again desecrate with their sorceries those hallowed regions on which the wizard and the conjuror have long ceased to tread. *

The elements and perturbations of the sixth satellite of Saturn having been elaborately investigated by Bessel, and very little being known respecting the rest, Sir John Herschel availed himself of his advantageous position at the Cape, to make a series of observations on these interesting bodies. Our readers are no doubt aware that after the fourth satellite had been discovered by Huygens in 1655, Cassini discovered the fifth in 1671, and the first, second, and third, in 1684. Sir W. Herschel discovered, in 1780, the sixth and seventh nearer the planet than the rest, the seventh being the nearest. As this nomenclature was very unsatisfactory, many astronomers named them by given numbers corresponding to their distances from the planet; and Sir John Herschel has proposed to distinguish them by a series of heathen names, as in the following table:

Although it would be difficult to banish from our Solar System the names of the heathen gods by which the primary planets are distinguished, yet we must enter our protest against the admission of a brood of demigods. The nomenclature in the first column of the preceding Table is doubtless the proper one, and the adoption of it can be attended with no more inconvenience than we are accustomed to in analogous matters. If the houses of a street are numbered before it is completed, the numbers must be changed whenever a new house is placed on a vacant area. If it is proper or necessary to give names to the secondary planets, our mythological knowledge must be more extensively put in requisition, for we cannot allow the planet Saturn to have a monopoly of the gods. We must find names for the four satellites of Jupiter, and Uranus; and Neptune will make a similar and a heavy demand upon Lemprière.

Sir John Herschel concludes his work with a Seventh chapter, containing Observations on the Solar Spots, and conjectures respecting their cause. The figures of the spots, of which he has given us thirteen in a very interesting plate, were delineated from

infinitesimal arc of that immeasurable circle in which it is destined to revolve. It is as if the traveller or naturalist, equipped for the survey of nature's beauties and wonders, had been limited only to a Sabbath's journey. Some mountain tops might rise to his view as he creeps along, and some peaks might disappear beyond the horizon which he leaves behind; but had the first man surveyed the constellation Hercules, to which our system is advancing, it would have seemed to him as remote as it will appear to the last of our race.

In the contemplation of the infinite in number and in magnitude, the mind ever fails us. We stand appalled before the mighty spectre of boundless space, and faltering reason sinks under the load of its bursting conceptions. But placed, as we are, on the great locomotive of our system, destined surely to complete at least one round of its ethereal course, and learning that we can make no apparent advance on our sidereal journey, we pant with new ardour for that distant bourne which we constantly approach without the possibility of reaching it. In feeling this disappointment, and patiently bearing it, let us endeavour to realize the great truth from which it flows. It cannot occupy our mind without exalting and improving it. It cannot take its place among our acquirements without hallowing and ennobling them. Though now but a truth to be received, it may yet become a principle of action, and though now veiled by a cloud, it may yet be a lamp to our feet and a light to our ways. Whom God made after his own image, he will not retain in perpetual darkness. What man's reason has made known, man will be permitted to see and to understand. "He that bindeth the sweet influences of the Pleiades, and looseth the bands of Orion, and quieteth Arcturus with his sons," will in His own time "discover deep things out of darkness," and "reveal the ordinances of heaven."

IT has been the good or ill fortune of Dr. Hampden to be the occasion of a controversy, now of some twelve years' standing, in which the real merits of the question at issue form almost the only subject, ecclesiastical or academic, that has not been canvassed. The Oxford convocation of graduates,—its constitution,—the veto of the proctors on its proceedings,—its legal competency to pass a vote of censure on a theological professor, excluding him from the board for naming university preachers,—the moral weight or technical value of such a sentence,—the bearing upon it of another Act, six years later, making the same professor member of another board, the amount of confirmation implied in the refusal, at a still later period, to rescind the original censure;—then, coming down to the present time, the relation in which the judgment of a University stands, or ought to stand, to the practical matter of church-preferment,—the act of the Crown, or its advisers, in appointing to a bishopric a man under an alleged University ban as a heretic,—the propriety of the remonstrance of certain of the bishops,—the force of a congé d'élire,—the terror of a premunire,—the position of a dean and chapter refusing to concur in choosing the Queen's presentee,—the effect of a protest by the dean and an individual canon against the choice, as regards the chance of martyrdom,—the functions of the Archi-episcopal Court for confirming the bishop's election,—the claim of objectors to be heard against the confirmation,—and now, lastly, the jurisdiction of the Court of Queen's Bench amid this chaos of confused forms and laws:—such are a few of the interesting points raised in this edifying controversy,—not to mention the infinite personalities of imputed motives and suspected ends on all sides; while to this hour, the main original inquiry,—Is the worthy Doctor, around whom so great a dust has been gathered, a heretic or a true man?—remains substantially where it was in 1836, when all this stir began.

We have no intention of entering upon this inquiry in the present article. We regard it as an inquiry of the last importance, affecting not only Dr. Hampden’s personal reputation for orthodoxy; but the general condition and tendency of the learned theology of our day. It is an inquiry, also, of no small difficulty, and on this account, as well as from a sense of its vast importance, we would desire to devote more time and space to it than we can now command.

these chapters shall be re-written. Sincerely do we hope that the assured success of this fine production may encourage others to favour the public with equally full and elaborate Dissertations on particular Scripture subjects, this being a department in which our English Biblical literature is wofully deficient.

NINEVAH, or the dwelling of Ninus, was the metropolis of the great Assyrian Empire, the residence of a long line of illustrious princes, and once the largest and most populous city in the world. We learn from the book of Genesis that Asshur, one of the sons of Shem, "went forth" from the land of Shinar, and built Nineveh; but we hear nothing more of it in the sacred writings till Jonah, its inspired missionary, describes it as "a great city," an "exceeding great city of three days' journey," and which required him to take "a day's journey" before he reached the spot from which he was to predict its overthrow. The immense population of this great metropolis is also clearly indicated by the prophet. It contained "more than six score thousand (120,000) persons that could not discern between their right hand and their left hand," and must therefore have contained a population of nearly 600,000.

Although the Ninevites repented at the preaching of Jonah, and were for a while spared, yet the prophet Nahum was, a short time afterwards, commissioned to declare "the burden of Nineveh,"—to announce the destruction of the city, and the downfal of the Assyrian Empire. He describes it as a city with many strongholds, and many gates with bars,—her merchants as multiplied above the stars of heaven,—her inhabitants and princes numerous as the locusts, and the " store and glory" of her "pleasant furniture" as endless. "This is the rejoicing city," says Zephaniah, "that dwelt carelessly, that said in her heart, I am, and there is none besides me: how is she become a desolation, a place for beasts to lie down in!"

These predictions were literally fulfilled by the destruction of the city in the year 606 B.C., by the combined armies of Cyaxares, King of Persia and Media, and Nabopolassar, who was either King of Babylon, or, as Mr. Layard thinks, the Assyrian governor of the city. "He that dasheth in pieces came up before her face;" "the gates of her land were set wide open unto her enemies;" "fire devoured her bars," and "herself;" "the noise of the whip, and of the rattling of the wheels, and of the prancing horses, and of the jumping chariots," resounded in her "broad ways;" "the gates of the river were opened, and the palace dissolved;" "there was no end of the corpses of the slain;" "the spoil of silver and the spoil of gold" were "taken;" "and the voice of her messengers was no more heard;" "the nations saw her nakedness, and the kingdoms her shame;" "Nineveh was laid waste;" "she was made a desolation, and dry like a wilderness."

The account of Nineveh as given by profane historians, the details of its destruction, and its present condition as observed by modern travellers, confirm in a most remarkable manner the statements of the ancient prophets. Its walls are described by profane writers as a hundred feet high, sixty miles in circumference, and defended by 1500 towers, each of which was 200 feet in height. Diodorus Siculus informs us that the city was destroyed partly by water and partly by fire, and that many talents of gold and silver preserved from the flames were carried to Ecbatana. Lucian, a native of Samosata near the Euphrates, who flourished in the second century, (between A.D. 90 and A.D. 180,) informs us that Nineveh had utterly perished,—that not a vestige of it remained, and that no one could even point out the place which it occupied.

During the eighteen centuries which have elapsed since the time of Lucian, Nineveh was known only in its name. Its very ruins had disappeared; and while the traveller and the antiquary were investigating the remains of Greek and Roman grandeur, and the geologist was ranging over the globe to discover and disinter the fossil remains of the primeval world, no inquiry was made after the Nineveh and Babylon of Holy Writ, and no pilgrimage undertaken to search for the buried palaces of the Assyrian kings. Huge mounds, seemingly composed of earth and rubbish, had long ago attracted the notice of travellers in Assyria

and Babylonia, and were conjectured to be the remains of their mighty capitals. A vitrified mass of brickwork, Birs Nimroud, rising out of the accumulated rubbish of centuries, was believed to be the tower of Babel. The temple of Belus, according to Herodotus, and other mounds in the neighbourhood, were supposed to be the hanging gardens and marvellous structures attributed to the two Queens, Semiramis and Nitocris; but the difficulty of reaching these localities, though it excited the curiosity of the antiquarian, prevented the traveller from ever paying them a passing visit. The presumed site of the Assyrian metropolis had excited still deeper interest than that of Babylonia. The enormous mounds on the left bank of the Tigris, opposite the modern city of Mosul on the right bank, had been noticed by several travellers; and the traditional tomb of Jonah on the top of one of the mounds, gave probability to the supposition that it marked the site of Nineveh; but notwithstanding this probability, Mr. Macdonald Kinnear, who examined these mounds, was disposed to believe that they were the site of a Roman camp of the time of Hadrian!

It is to the late Mr. Rich, the East India Company's resident at Baghdad, that we owe the first investigation of Assyrian remains. The results of his first examination of the ruins of Babylon near Hillah, which he made in May 1812, with a dissertation on the topography of ancient Babylon, were first published at Vienna in Von Hammer's Oriental Journal, entitled Mines de l'Orient, and this work was afterwards reprinted in England in 1815, under the title of Memoir on the Ruins of Babylon. He found the ruins to consist of mounds of earth, formed by the decomposition of buildings, channelled and furrowed by the weather, and having their surface strewed with pieces of brick, bitumen, and pottery. The grand mass of these ruins is 1100 yards long, 800 yards broad, 50 or 60 feet high, and of a quadrantal form. The next grand heap, of nearly a square form, is 700 yards long, and nearly 100 broad. It is the most interesting portion, according to Mr. Rich, of the ruins of Babylon, every vestige of it indicating its superiority to the rest. In the winding caverns and subterranean passages within are found walls of burnt bricks laid in mortar, with fragments of vessels; and Mr. Rich obtained a sepulchral earthenware urn, with human bones near it, which pulverized with the touch. The other remarkable objects examined by Mr. Rich were the Kasr or Palace, * consisting of several walls

and piers, three different perspective views of which have been published by the author. A mile to the north of the Kasr, and fully five miles from Hillah, is the Mujelibe, which Petro della Valle, and after him Major Rennel, determines to have been the tower of Belus. It is of an oblong, irregular shape. The elevation of the highest angle is 141 feet, the average length of its four sides being about 185 yards. In digging out the earth for a passage in the northern part, Mr. Rich discovered near the top a wooden coffin, containing a skeleton in high preservation. A brass bird outside the coffin, and an inside brass ornament were found; and a little further on was found the skeleton of a child. There were no ruins on the eastern side of the river. Mr. Rich then visited the Birs Nimroud, "the most stupendous and surprising mass of all the remains of Babylon, situated in the desert about six miles to the south-west of Hillah." It is an oblong mound, 762 yards in circumference, having on its summit a solid pile of brick, 37 feet high and 28 broad, perforated by small square holes disposed in rhomboids, and having vitrified masses on its summit. The mound is itself a ruin, channelled and strewed with fragments of all sorts. There is some reason to believe with Niebuhr and Mr. Rich, that Birs Nimroud, "which is pretty nearly in the state in which Alexander saw it," was the tower of Belus, described by Herodotus. *

In Mr. Rich's Second Memoir on Babylon, published in 1818, he gives a slight notice of the ruins of Nineveh. He speaks of the rectangular inclosure opposite Mosul as answering to the palace of Nineveh. Its sides correspond to the cardinal points of the compass, the western, one of the largest, facing the river. Its boundary, resembling a low embankment of rubbish, "has attached to it and its line, † at several places, mounds of greater size and solidity." The village of Nebbi Yunus, where they show Jonah's tomb, is built on the mound at the southwest angle. The largest mound situated near the centre of the western face, is supposed to be the monument of Ninus, and is called by the natives Koyunjik Tepe, the

village of Koyunjik being built at its northeast extremity. It has the shape of a truncated pyramid, and is 178 feet high, 1850 feet long on its summit from east to west, and 1847 from north to south. An immense block of stone, sculptured with the figures of men and animals, was found a "short time ago" in one of the mounds on the north face of it.

In the year 1820, Mr. Rich paid his fourth visit to Mosul. Having been obliged, for the benefit of his health, to visit Kurdistan, he returned to Baghdad by way of Mosul, and employed the few weeks he was able to spend in that city in examining the mounds on the opposite bank of the river. In passing through the area of Nineveh, on the 31st of October, he observed marks of a double wall, "the walls on the east having become quite a concretion of pebbles, like the natural hills," though large hewn stones are frequently dug out of them. The stormy weather having abated, he began his examination of the ruins on the 8th November, crossing the Tigris where it was about two fathom deep, and 400 feet wide. At the village of Nebbi Yunus, he found various pieces of gypsum, with inscriptions in the cuneiform or arrow-headed character, one of which, now in the British Museum, was covered with writing. Another appeared to be part of the wall of a passage "said to reach far into the mound." A third, apparently in its original position, is part of a wall plastered with mud. "I doubt not," says Mr. Rich, "but many other antiquities might be found in this mound, but the greater part of it is thickly covered with a labyrinth of small houses, and it is only on the repairing or falling down of these that such things are discovered."

After visiting the tomb of Jonah, consisting of several dark, narrow, and vaulted ancient passages, surmounted by a mosque, he examined the area of Nineveh, which, at a rough guess, he makes from one and a half to two miles broad, and four miles long, stretching a short way south of Nebbi Yunus. The mound of Koyunjik is 43 feet high, and 7691 in circuit. A fragment of pottery with cuneiform writing was discovered in his presence, and on the south side of the inclosure were found huge stones laid in layers of bitumen and lime mortar. There was also found at Nebbi Yunus a square stone slab, with an extremely perfect cuneiform inscription. After a careful survey of the locality, * Mr. Rich again came to the conclusion at which he had previously arrived, that the present inclosure formed only part of a great city, and was probably either the citadel or royal precincts, an opinion which is in harmony with the descriptions of Strabo and Diodorus Siculus. † Although Mr. Rich lived four months on the site of Nineveh, he made no attempt to excavate the mound, and hence all the antiquities which he did collect, including those from Babylon, would not occupy a cube of three feet.

Such was the meagre information which we possessed in 1844 of the site of Nineveh, and of the sculptures and arts of Assyria. Mr. Layard, indeed, had at an earlier period trodden this consecrated ground, and made some attempts to disinter its antiquities. After wandering through Asia Minor and Syria, in 1839 and 1840, he completed his pilgrimage by repairing to the remains of Nineveh and Babylon. On the 10th April 1840, he entered Mosul, and visited the extensive ruins on the left bank of the Tigris, including the great mounds of Koyunjik and Nebbi Yunus. He explored, in company with Mr. Ainsworth, the mound of Kalah Sherghat, a vast ruin on the Tigris, 50 miles below its junction with the Zab. On his way thither, and near the Arab village of Hammun Ali, he saw the vestiges of an ancient city. From an artificial eminence, he observed over a line of lofty mounds one of a pyramidical form rising high above the rest. "This was the pyramid which Xenophon had described, and near which the ten thousand had encamped;

the ruins around it were those which the Greek General saw twenty-two centuries before, and which were even then the remains of an ancient city." In the vast mass of shapeless ruins at Kalah Sherghat, he discovered a few fragments of pottery and inscribed bricks, but he sought in vain for figures carved in black stone, which, according to a tradition among the Arabs, existed among the ruins. Mr. Layard was particularly struck with the contrast between these ruins and those which he had left behind him in Asia Minor or Syria, and he has presented to us this contrast in the following beautiful passage:—

Mr. Layard again saw and examined the ruins of Nimroud, when descending the Tigris on a raft in the middle of April. Amid the flowers of every hue with which the spring rains had enamelled the mound and the adjacent meadows, he found "a few fragments of bricks, pottery, and alabaster, upon which might be traced the well-defined edges of the cuneiform character." From the base of the mound there stretched a long line of consecutive narrow mounds, which retained the appearance of walls or ramparts, and formed a vast quadrangle. A great dam here crosses the Tigris, which flows over it in a formidable cataract. It consists of huge stones squared and united by cramps of iron, and was intended to furnish water to the innumerable canals which are spread like network over the country. These dams, which greatly impeded the fleets of Alexander, were even in his time looked upon as the works of an ancient nation. The curiosity of Mr. Layard was highly excited by the contemplation of these ancient remains, and "from that time he formed the design of thoroughly examining, whenever it might be in his power, these singular ruins."

When Mr. Layard again visited Mosul, in the summer of 1842, on his way to Constantinople, he found that M. Botta, a nephew of the historian of Italy, had, since his former visit, been appointed French Consul in that city, and had commenced excavations in the great mound of Koyunjik. These excavations were very limited in extent, and had at that time yielded but a few fragments of brick and alabaster, containing a few letters in the cuneiform or arrow-headed character. M. Botta, however, was not discouraged. While continuing his excavations in the same mound, a peasant from the village of Khorsabad, about four or five hours distant from Mosul, happened to visit the spot, and advised the Consul to try the mound on which his own village, of 50 or 60 hovels, was built. M. Botta sent an agent, with one or two workmen, who, on sinking a well, came upon the top of a wall, which, upon digging deeper, they found to consist of sculptured slabs of gypsum. He hastened to the village, and upon cutting a wider trench in the direction of the wall, he found that he had opened a chamber connected with others, and formed of slabs of gypsum, covered with sculptured representations of battles, sieges, and similar events. At the end of six months, he had explored no fewer than six chambers or halls, some of which were very large, and seen 459 feet of bas-reliefs, between which were cut numerous inscriptions in the cuneiform character, proving that the building belonged to a period which preceded the conquest of Alexander. In this manner had M. Botta discovered an Assyrian building, the first, probably, as Mr. Layard remarks, which had been exposed to the view of man since the fall of the Assyrian Empire. As the edifice thus explored had been destroyed by fire, the slabs of gypsum, had reduced to lime by the intense heat, fell rapidly to pieces on exposure to the air. No precaution, says Mr. Layard, could arrest their rapid decay; and it was to be feared that this wonderful monument had only been uncovered to complete its ruin. The records of victories and triumphs which had long attested the power, and swelled the pride, of the Assyrian kings, and had resisted the ravages of ages, were now passing away

for ever. They could scarcely be held together until an inexperienced pencil should secure an imperfect evidence of their former existence. Almost all that was first discovered thus speedily disappeared, and the same fate has befallen nearly everything subsequently found at Khorsabad.

When M. Botta's means were exhausted, he transmitted copies of the sculptures and inscriptions to his friend M. Mohl, the celebrated oriental scholar, who laid them before the Academy of Inscriptions and Belles Lettres in Paris. * This learned body took a deep interest in the subject, and induced the Minister of the Interior, M. Duchatel, to make a grant from the public funds to carry on the excavations at Khorsabad. M. Eugene Flandin, a skilful draftsman, whose talents and zeal had been displayed in his travels in Persia, was sent as an auxiliary to the Consul, and on his arrival at Mosul, a system of effectual research was instantly adopted. M. Botta purchased the whole village of Khorsabad for a certain number of piastres from the Chapter of Arbela, to whom it belonged. The Pasha, however, threw difficulties in the way; but in consequence of his death, and the delay in appointing his successor, the French antiquaries pursued their inquiries with ardour and success. Fifteen chambers, many of which were from 111 to 115 feet in length, were explored. The sculptures occupy tablets of marble from 6½ to 10 feet wide, covering the brick walls to the height of 10 feet. In some of the galleries these tablets form two belts, each 3½ feet high, containing figures 3 feet 3 inches in height. Cuneiform inscriptions occupy the space between these two belts. The relief of the figures is proportional to their size, which is occasionally such as to reach from the bottom to the top of the marble slab. These figures compose processions of kings, priests, nobles, and warriors, extending to the length of 1300 feet along the whole façades. Battle-pieces, festivals, captive cities, and the torture and execution of prisoners, are all represented with admirable skill and spirit, and in the highest style of art. The principal gates of entrance are surmounted by gigantic winged bulls, with human heads, crowned with a huge tiara, small lions having been chained at the feet of the bulls. M. Flandin has noticed it as remarkable, that the lion is never represented at liberty, but always in chains; and it deserves also to be remarked, that there are no inscriptions at Khorsabad on the external façades of the buildings. He, therefore, with much probability, refers these sculptures, and the palace which they adorn, to the second and last dynasty of the Assyrian kings, whose names occur in the sacred writings. Mr. Layard was among the first persons who were made acquainted with these researches of M. Botta, who liberally allowed him to see his letters and drawings as they passed through Constantinople; and during the whole period of his excavations, he not only sent Mr. Layard his descriptions, but copies of the inscriptions, without exacting any promise as to the use he might make of them. M. Botta's excavations were completed early in 1845; and having secured many excellent specimens of Assyrian sculpture, he returned to Europe with a rich collection of inscriptions, now lodged in Paris.

Mr. Layard was among the first to form an opinion of the age and origin of the remarkable palace discovered by M. Botta; and in three letters, published in the Malta Times, he stated the general grounds upon which he founded his views. Thus informed on the subject, and impressed with the importance of pursuing these researches, Mr. Layard was anxious to devote himself to the task. If Khorsabad did not represent ancient Nineveh, and if the edifice discovered there had been one of its palaces, other buildings, more vast and magnificent, must exist nearer the seat of government, on the banks of the Tigris. Occupied with this conviction, Mr. Layard's thoughts reverted to the ruins at Nimroud, and the traditions with which they were associated. In the autumn of 1845, Sir Stratford Canning had mentioned to him his willingness to bear for a limited time the expenses of excavations in Assyria, and it is to this generous and noble action of our ambassador that we owe that noble collection of Assyrian antiquities which Mr. Layard has succeeded in transmitting to the British Museum.

Furnished with letters of introduction to the authorities at Mosul, Mr. Layard left Constantinople in the middle of October 1845, "crossed the Mountains of Pontus, and the great Steppes of the Usun Yilak, as fast as post-horses could carry him, descended the high lands into the valley of the Tigris, galloped over the vast plains of Assyria, and reached Mosul in twelve days." Having paid his respects to the Governor, Mohammed Pasha, and secretly procured

a few tools, and engaged a mason, he left Mosul on the 8th November, and accompanied by Mr. Ross, a British merchant in Mosul, his own Cawass, and a servant, he descended the Tigris to Nimroud in five hours, and at sunset reached the Arab village of Naifa. Awad, a Sheikh of the Jehesh, in whose house he lodged, entered his service, and speedily engaged six Arabs to assist in the excavations. In the principal mound, only twenty minutes' walk from the village, about 1800 feet long, 900 broad, and 65 high, supposed to be the pyramid of Xenophon, they found fragments with cuneiform inscriptions, and in the course of the morning ten large slabs forming a square were uncovered, forming the top of a chamber, with an entrance at the north-west corner, where a slab was wanting. Cuneiform inscriptions occupied the centre of all the slabs, which were in the highest preservation. Digging into the side of the mound, the workmen came immediately to a wall having similar inscriptions, but the slabs had been exposed to intense heat, and were so cracked and reduced to lime, that they threatened to fall to pieces. The labours of this first day's work were highly encouraging, and strengthened with five Turcomans, who had been attracted by the prospect of regular wages, the party began the work of the second day. Inscribed slabs, ivory ornaments, with traces of gilding, among which was a male figure in long robes, walls branching out at different angles, and a great accumulation of charcoal, proving the destruction of one of the buildings by fire, were the amount of this day's labour. During the continuance of the excavations for other three days, several inscriptions were uncovered, but no sculptures. Scattered fragments of gold-leaf had induced the workmen to believe that Mr. Layard was in search of gold, and even his head-workman, Awad, had arrived at the same conclusion. "O Bey," said he, "here is the gold sure enough, and, please God, we shall find it all in a few days. Only don't say anything about it to these Arabs, for they are asses, and cannot hold their tongues. The matter will come to the ears of the Pasha." The Sheikh was at once disappointed and surprised when Mr. Layard presented him with the golden treasure he had collected, and assured him that he might retain " all such as he might hereafter discover."

As the experiment of excavation had been successfully tried, Mr. Layard galloped to Mosul in order to acquaint the Pasha, Keritli Oglu, (the son of the Cretan), with the nature and object of his researches. This extortioner by law had one eye and one ear, was short and fat, deeply indented with the small-pox, uncouth in gestures, and harsh in voice. He revived old and forgotten impositions, and he "particularly insisted on dish pararsi, (tooth-money)—a compensation levied upon all villages in which a man of such rank is entertained, for the wear and tear of his teeth in masticating the food he condescends to receive from the inhabitants." The population were in a state of terror and despair, and hopes were expressed and reports whispered, that the tyrant was to be deposed. These murmurs had reached his ears, and he fell upon a plan to test the feeling of the people.

It was to such a man that Mr. Layard had now to appeal. The report of hidden treasure had induced the fanatical Cadi and some of the principal inhabitants to endeavour to raise a riot, which was to end in the demolition of the British Consulate, and other acts of violence. Under these circumstances, Mr. Layard waited on the Pasha, and congratulated him on his speedy recovery—a compliment which he received with a grim smile of satisfaction. The Pasha then introduced the subject of the Cadi:—" 'Does that ill-conditioned fellow,' said he, 'think that he has Sheriff Pasha (his immediate predecessor) to deal with, that he must be planning a riot in the town? When I was at Siwas, the Ulema tried to excite the people because I encroached on a burying-ground. But I made them eat dirt! Wallah! I took every grave-stone and built up the castle walls with them.' He pretended at first to be ignorant of the excavations at Nimroud; but subsequently thinking that he would convict me of prevarication in my answers to his questions as to the amount of treasure discovered, pulled out of his writing-tray a scrap of paper as dingy as that produced by Awad, in which was also preserved an almost invisible particle of gold-leaf. These, he said, had been brought to him by the commander of the irregular

troops stationed at Selamiyah, who had been watching my proceedings. I suggested that he should name an agent to be present as long as I worked at Nimroud, to take charge of all the precious metals that might be discovered."

No objection having been made to the continuance of the excavations, Mr. Layard rode daily from his new residence at Selamiyah, a distance of three miles, to superintend the work. Two fine bas-relief sculptures were now discovered, one representing war-chariots, with warriors, and richly caparisoned horses; and another, the siege of a castle or walled city, with warriors, some on the turrets discharging arrows and stones, and others ascending a ladder placed against the walls. While meditating upon this interesting discovery, Daoud Agha, the commander of the irregulars, brought orders from Mosul to stop the excavations, by threatening the workmen. Mr. Layard rode off early next morning to Mosul to expostulate with the Pasha, who, pretending surprise, disclaimed having given any orders, and directed his secretary to write an order to the commander of the irregulars to assist rather than obstruct him. Mr. Layard requested this letter to be sent to him before he left Mosul; but the Pasha, on the ground that he was unwilling to detain him, promised to forward it in the evening. On his arrival at Selamiyah, Mr. Layard informed Daoud Agha of the success of his visit; but the commander returned to him at midnight with the news, that a horseman had just brought him the most stringent orders, that on no account was he to permit the excavations to be continued. Confounded with this intelligence, Mr. Layard visited the Pasha next day, and received the following explanation of his conduct:—

Mr. Layard pretended to acquiesce in this decision, and requested that a Cawass of his own might be sent with him to Nimroud, in order to have the sculptures already uncovered drawn, and the inscriptions copied. The Pasha's Cawass was readily induced to countenance the employment of a few workmen to guard the sculptures during the day. With regard to the graves that had been disturbed, Daoud Agha confessed that he had been ordered to make graves on the mound, and that his troops had for two nights been bringing stones from distant villages for that purpose. "We have destroyed," said he, "more real tombs of the true believers in making sham ones, than you could have defiled between the Zab and Selamiyah. We have killed our horses and ourselves in carrying these accursed stones." Continuing to employ a few men to open trenches by way of experiment, several gigantic figures, uninjured by fire, were discovered, a crouching lion rudely carved in basalt, and a pair of gigantic winged bulls, without the head and half the wings. On the back of these slabs, 14 feet long, on which these animals had been carved in high relief, were inscriptions in large and well cut characters. A pair of winged lions without the heads, admirably designed and carefully executed, were also discovered, and a human figure nine feet high. These sculptures were left in situ, the upper part only having been examined.

Having now no doubt of the existence of vast edifices in the interior of the mound of Nimroud, Mr. Layard urged on Sir Stratford Canning the necessity of a firman order from the Porte, to prevent his proceedings from being interfered with. He covered over the sculptures, and withdrew from Nimroud, leaving an agent at Selamiyah. On entering Mosul on the 18th December, he found the population rejoicing at the dismissal of Keritli Oglu, and the appointment of Ishmael Pasha as his successor. Owing to the state of the weather, the continuance of the excavations was impossible, and Mr. Layard proceeded to Baghdad, which he reached on the 24th December, in order to consult Major Rawlinson, and make arrangements for the removal of the sculptures at a future period. On his return to Mosul early in January, the new Pasha gave him every assistance and protection. His agent at Nimroud had not been idle. The counterfeit graves had been removed, and also others which possessed more claim to respect. Mr. Layard satisfied the Arabs, that as the bodies were not turned towards Mecca, they could not be those of true believers.

The Cadi of Mosul again contrived to interrupt the excavation. He alleged that Mr. Layard was carrying off treasure, and trying

to prove by the inscriptions that the Franks once held the country. The Mufti took up the same ground, and complained to the Pasha, who requested him to suspend his operations for a short time. Still, however, he made fresh experiments with only a few men to avoid notice. He discovered two human figures about the natural size, in bas-relief, and with the freshness of a recent work. All their parts were entire. The figures were back to back with wings, and an inscription ran across the sculptures. He now recognised at once whence many of the sculptures of the S. W. buildings had been brought, and it was evident, he thought, that he had at length discovered the earliest palace in Nimroud. In the N. W. palace he discovered an eagle-headed figure, of a very singular form, furnished with wings, and clothed in long robes. On all these figures paint could be distinctly seen, particularly on the hair, beard, eyes, and sandals, and the slabs were such that they could be easily packed and transported.

When Mr. Layard was returning to the mound on the morning after these discoveries, he saw two Arabs on their mares approaching him at the top of their speed. "Hasten, O Bey," they exclaimed, " Hasten to the diggers, for they have found Nimroud himself!"

Having engaged two or three men to sleep near the sculptures, Mr. Layard celebrated the day's discovery by a slaughter of sheep, and by a dance, which was kept up during the greater part of the night. Mosul was thrown into commotion by the news. Nimroud was declared by the terrified Arabs to have appeared, and the Cadi, the Mufti, and the Ulema, complained to the Pasha that these excavations were contrary to the Koran. The Pasha requested the excavations to be discontinued till the sensation in the town had subsided. Two men, however, were allowed to dig leisurely, and before the end of March two additional and magnificent specimens of Assyrian art, in perfect preservation, were secured, namely, a second pair of winged human-headed lions, about twelve feet in length and height. Cuneiform inscriptions, in which not a character was wanting, covered all the parts of the slab that were not occupied by the figure.

After paying a visit to the celebrated ruins of Al Hather, which have been described by Dr. Ross † and Mr. Ainsworth, ‡ Mr. Layard returned to Mosul to resume his operations. As several of the principal Christian families were anxious to see the sculptures, Mr. Layard wished to gratify their curiosity by giving them a ball and supper before the summer heat had commenced. The French and English consuls, and their ladies, joined the party, and a general invitation was given to all the Arabs of the district, men and women. The Pasha lent his white pavilions, which were pitched near the river, on a broad lawn, carpeted with flowers, for the accommodation of the ladies and the reception of the Sheikhs; and black tents were provided for some of the guests, and the attendants of the kitchen. In the centre of the group of tents an open space was left for dancing and other exhibitions. The Sheikh Abd-ur-rahman arrived early, magnificently dressed, on his tall white mare, and surrounded by horsemen, carrying spears tipt with tufts of ostrich feathers. A Kurdish band of music accompanied Mr. Layard to meet the Sheikh, whose attendants urged their mares to the top of their speed, engaging in mimic war, and filling the air with their wild war-cry, which was almost drowned by the Kurds, who belaboured their drums and blew their pipes with redoubled energy. The other Sheikhs, with their women and children, came on foot. The wife and daughters of Abd-ur-rahman, mounted on mares, and surrounded by their slaves and hand-maidens, next appeared. When they had dismounted at the entrance of the ladies' tents, they were entertained with sweetmeats, parched peas, and lettuces, while the assembled crowd, male and female, enjoyed the more solid fare of fourteen sheep that were roasted and boiled for the occasion. The dinner was succeeded by dancing, and Mr. Rassam persuaded some of the women to join the debké, the dance of the Arabs, compounded of shuffling steps, twisting attitudes, and stamping, yelling, and jumping. Sword-dances, by warriors of different tribes, were performed; but as the excitement increased with the music, the bystanders were obliged to replace the swords of the performers with stout staves, with which they belaboured one another unmercifully, each successful hit being applauded by the male war-cry and the female tahlehl of the tribe to which the one who dealt it belonged. This féte, which was kept up by moonlight till an early hour, was returned by Abd-ur-rahman, who entertained the Franks next day with debkés and sword-dances. The Sheikh insisted upon Mr. Layard joining with him in leading off a dance, in which they were accompanied by some five hundred warriors and Arab women.

Fortunately for Mr. Layard, a new Governor, Tahyar Pasha, courteous to Europeans, and well-informed in literature and history, came to Mosul; but his means being very limited, he was not able to carry on the excavations as he wished. A small but effective body of workmen, however, continued to excavate, and the result of

their labour was the winged human-headed bull, whose head had been previously found, sixteen copper lions, varying from a foot to an inch in size, and three interesting slabs, now in England, exhibiting the front of the lion and the bull, which, from "the art displayed in the treatment and composition, the correct and effective delineation of the man and animal, the spirit of the grouping, and its extraordinary preservation, is probably the finest specimen of Assyrian art in existence."

At this time, a vizirial letter arrived, procured by Sir Stratford Canning, authorizing the excavations and the removal of the sculptures. Mr. Layard received it when on a gazelle-hunting excursion with Abd-ur-rahman, and he "read by the light of a small camel-dung fire the document which secured to the British nation the records of Nineveh, and a collection of the earliest monuments of Assyrian art." Pecuniary resources, however, were still wanting for extensive excavations; but the zeal of Mr. Layard compensated the parsimony of England. He now opened trenches in the great mound of Koyunjik, which travellers had supposed to mark the true site of Nineveh. The French consul claimed the ruins as French property; but as the claim was not recognised, he and Mr. Layard excavated in different directions for about a month, without much success. The sculptures and inscriptions, however, enabled Mr. Layard to assert with some confidence, that the building to which they belonged was contemporary with that of Khorsabad, and of a more recent epoch than the most ancient palace of Nimroud. After inspecting and covering up for future examination a number of sculptured slabs discovered at Nimroud, Mr. Layard employed himself in packing and transporting to Bombay, by the way of Bagdad, such sculptures as could be moved with the means at his disposal. Steam-vessels having failed in their attempt to ascend the Tigris, Mr. Layard was obliged to float them down to Bagdad on rafts formed of inflated skins and beams of poplar wood. During the operation of packing and transporting the sculptures to the river, which was done by buffalo carts, belonging to the Pasha, the Pasha himself, accompanied by a large body of regular and irregular troops with three guns, paid a visit to Mr. Layard, who entertained this large company for two days, the Pasha's tents being pitched on an island in the Tigris. His Excellency was as much astonished at the sculptures as the Arabs, and the gigantic human-headed lion terrified as well as amazed his Osmanli followers.

Mr. Layard's health compelled him to renounce for awhile his labours at Nimroud, and as he required a cooler climate, he determined to visit the Tiyari mountains, inhabited by the Chaldæan or Nestorian Christians, and to return in September to resume his labours under a cooler sky. After visiting the French excavations at Khorsabad, on his way to the mountains, he passed through the town of Amadiyah, the limit of the authority of the Pasha of Mosul, and reached the village of Asheetha, where he was hospitably received by Yakoub the Rais or chief, and rapturously welcomed by the Chaldæans whom he had employed at Nimroud. This, and all the other villages of the Chaldæan Christians, with the exception of Zaweetha, had been destroyed in 1843 by the ruthless Beder Khan Bey, who massacred in cold blood nearly 10,000 of the inhabitants, and carried off as slaves large numbers of girls and children. * Yakoub, who had witnessed all the scenes of bloodshed in the Tiyari, having been continually with Beder Khan Bey as a hostage, pointed out to Mr. Layard the places where they were perpetrated. When at Lizan on the Zab, without an inhabitable house, the travellers were obliged to spread their carpets amongst the tombs in the graveyard of a roofless church, slowly rising from its ruins, and "the first edifice in the village to be rebuilt." Mr. Layard was induced to visit the scene of one of the most terrible incidents of the massacre, to which he was conducted by an active mountaineer, and he has given us the following account of it:—

On his way to Tkoma, Mr. Layard visited Raola, where the chief subject of conversation was the threatened invasion of Tkoma by Beder Khan Bey. At the village of Birijai he visited the church, in which he saw among the MSS. many ancient rituals, forms of prayer, and versions of the Scriptures; the Acts of the Apostles and the Epistles on vellum; and a fine copy of the Gospels, Acts, and Epistles also on vellum, entire, with numerous illuminations, written in the year of the Seleucidæ 1552, an era which commenced in October 312 before Christ. On Sunday morning Mr. Layard was roused at dawn to attend church. The ceremonies were short and simple. Two priests officiated in white surplices: a portion of Scripture was read and explained by the principal priest in the dialect of the mountains, as the Chaldæan of the books is understood by few. The prayers were chaunted by his companion, the congregation kneeling or standing, and joining in the responses. The people used the sign of the cross when entering, and bowed at the name of Christ. The sacrament was administered to all present—men, women, and children partaking of the bread and wine. Mr. Layard's companion received it also, and they seemed to feel hurt at his declining to take it, until he stated that he did not refuse from any religious prejudice. The congregation then embraced each other at the close of the service. "I could not but contrast," says Mr. Layard, "these simple and primitive rites, with the senseless mummery and degrading forms adopted by the converted Chaldæans of the plains—the unadorned and imageless walls with the hideous pictures and monstrous deformities which encumber the churches of Mosul."

One of the Meleks of the tribe came to Birijai to welcome Mr. Layard to Tkoma Gowaia, the principal village of the district, containing 160 houses. When they reached the church they found the whole tribe assembled there in consultation on the defence of their village against the threatened invasion of the Kurds. A deputation was sent off to the Pasha of Mosul to implore his protection and aid. At the deserted and ruined village of Chonba, in the valley of the Zab, Mr. Layard's party could not find a roof under which they could pass the night, and they were obliged to spread their carpets under a cluster of walnut trees, on the very same spot where Beder Khan Bey had pitched his tent after the great massacre, and where he received Melek Ismail, the chief of the Tiyari, when he was delivered a prisoner into his hands. Yakoub, who was present at the surrender of this Christian hero, thus described the event:—