their heads about such things as a Hindoo "dying- | bedstead, and all the numerous male relatives and house." servants followed on foot and in vehicles. came to tell me that a person in my employ was taken to the dying-house to die. I immediately said, I hoped no unfair means would be used towards him; and asked my native friend if I could be allowed to see the sick man. I ordered my carriage, and the Baboo accompanied me. They halted on the banks of the Hooghly, previous to taking him to a small house on the opposite side, the usual resort for the wealthy in their last mo ments. Some of the family wished me to see him; and I shall never forget the scene. They formed a circle round him. I stooped down to catch his eye; the sun was rising, a northerly wind was blowing, it was a fresh morning-all around was life; yet in the midst was death near at hand. I still held his hand, until at length he saw me, knew me, and spoke to me for the last time. They took him across the river; and as soon as I returned to my house, I wrote a note to my friend, their European doctor, to ask if anything could be done for the Baboo. The following is a copy of his reply : We arrived at the house on the banks of the river; and the crowd assembled as usual on such occasions fell back and made way for me. I entered the little close room, and begged most of the company to retire to let in some air. The sick man was lying on a mattress on the floor, with his head bolstered up; I stooped down, felt his pulse, and watched his drowsy eve until he caught sight of me, and knew me. Poor fellow! he seemed so grateful to think I should have come to see him in such a place. I asked him if he was prepared, if he thought he was about to die? and he replied, "Yes." I then called for the native doctor; and believing him not to be in a dying state, I said so emphatically, and that I hoped no unfair means would be adopted in his case. After a little time the doctor came, and pronounced him better. I requested chance of doing him any good, unless I were to sit permission to call in European medical advice, but it was refused; nevertheless, the man did recover; and, strange to say, he returned into the world again from that place which few, very few, have left alive. When we afterwards met, he always called me his deliverer. After my visit to the sick man, who was in good circumstances, I determined to visit the other wretched rooms and their dying inmates. A more horrible scene I never saw or felt. In these unfurnished rooms were people dying of fever, dysentery, &c., with only an attendant, asleep or awake, waiting until death should leave their corpses to be carried to the neighboring pyre, or thrown into the holy stream. One poor fellow was in agony with cholera, on the damp stone balcony. He had nothing but a rag round his waist; and a boy was by, watching for his last moments. I took hold of his wrist; his pulse was nearly gone; he opened his eyes upon me, but they were almost fixed in death; and the look he gave me I shall probably never forget. I left this harrowing scene resolved to try my humble efforts towards stopping such cruel customs, in order to give the dying the friendly comfort all so greatly need at that last struggle of human ex istence. evil Mr. Terry proposes a plan to remedy the he saw; but superstition stands in the way. The Hindoo dies, if he can, by the sacred Ganges; and neither priests nor patients would bear interference with their customs, though some regulations of the house might be introduced for the poor, or, as Mr. Terry proposes, a hospital subsituted for the dyinghouse. The rich, however, do not seem to be substantially any better off. Yesterday morning, one of the sons of an intimate Indian friend came into my room, in a flood of tears, to tell me that his father had been seized with paralysis, and that he was being taken to the river-side, according to Hindoo custom. I hastily dressed, and accompanied him in his carriage, and we soon overtook the whole party. It was a mournful sight. The old man, still alive, was borne by several attendants on a kind of low "My dear Terry-You may depend on it the Brahmins will not part with the old man's body, whatever becomes of his soul. I went to his house this morning about seven o'clock, and was told that he had been taken to the Ghaut on the other side, being the holy place; and there would not be a down all day by him, and with my own hand give him his medicine and food; for all that his relations dare give him is Gunga gal and mud, (Ganges water.) I had some hopes of him last night, had they persevered; but the only request the poor old man made to me, when he recovered sense enough to recognize me and to speak, was, 'Don't let me die at home, let me go to the river. So you may see there is no use in such cases in forcing medical advice on them, and I am persuaded they neither want nor will allow it." This morning I went over to pay a last visit to the poor old Baboo. The Brahmins had taken him to the water's edge; and there he lay, on a little mattress on the soft mud, panting, with nothing but a little thin muslin over his body, and his head bare. The rays of the sun fell on him hot enough to have injured a strong, healthy person. Three Brahmins continued to vociferate the names of goddesses in his ears, and to give him Ganges water. This mixture of superstition and cruelty disconcerted me; but, as the closing scene approached, the family begged me to retire, which I did. A few minutes afterwards, amidst one loud cry to the goddesses, the Baboo died. From the Examiner. Nineveh and its Remains: with an Account of a Visit to the Chaldæan Christians of Kurdistan, and Yezidis, or Devil-worshippers; and an Enquiry into the Manners and Arts of the Ancient Assyrians. By AUSTEN HENRY LAYARD, Esq., D. C. L. Two vols. Murray. THERE is a remarkable and delightful combination, in the book before us, of valuable discovery and interesting personal narrative, such as we remember in no similar book of travel or discovery. In what seems a life-long familiarity with Eastern character and habits, in vigorous freshness and straightforward simplicity of description, in an easy power of picturesque detail sustained with unflagging spirit-above all, in those personal of his work, Mr. Layard himself contrasts the asqualities which win submission and exert control pect of the great sites of ruin on either side the without appearing to exact either-Mr. Layard is not surpassed by the best of the old travellers. In the wonders of the story he has to tell, he very much surpasses them all. Books such as his may help to keep us proud of the name of Englishman. "Wonderful! wonderful!" exclaimed a worthy Arab sheikh, whose people had been employed by Mr. Layard in removal of some of the gigantic monuments of the buried Nineveh: "there is Euphrates. The traveller in Asia Minor or Syria sees what was once the temple of Balbec or the theatre of Ionia in graceful fragments of columns rising through thick myrtle foliage, and, by the beauty still appealing to his senses, can measure the beauty of the past. The traveller in Mesopotamia and Chaldea sees but vast, rude, shapeless mounds, rising from scorched plaius in huge mysterious heaps, to which his imagination appeals ir. surely no God but God, and Mohammed is his vain. There is no response. The oracles have prophet. In the name of the Most High, tell long been dumb. Desolation announces desola me, O bey, (addressing Mr. Layard,) what you are going to do with those stones. So many thousands of purses spent upon such things! Can it be, as you say, that your people learn wisdom from them; or is it, as his reverence the cadi declares, that they are to go to the palace of your queen, who, with the rest of the unbelievers, worship these idols? As for wisdom, these figures will not teach you to make any better knives, or scissors, or chintzes; and it is in the making of those things that the English show their wisdom. But God is great! God is great! Here are stones which have been buried ever since the time of the holy Noah-peace be with him! Perhaps they were under ground before the deluge. I have lived on the lands for years. My father, and the father of my father, pitched their tents here before me; but they never heard of these figures. For twelve hundred years have the true believers (and, praise be to God! all true wisdom is with them alone) been settled in this country, and none of them ever heard of a palace under ground. Neither did they who went before them. But lo! here comes a Frank from many days' journey off, and he walks up to the very place, and he takes a stick, (the sheikh illustrated his description with the point of his spear,) and makes a line here, and makes a line there. Here, says he, is the palace; there, says he, is the gate; and he shows us what has been all our lives beneath our feet, without our having known anything about it. Wonderful! wonderful! Is it by books, is it by magic, is it by your prophets, that you have learnt these things? Speak, O bey; tell me the secret of wisdom." Certainly it is wonderful. Natural were the reflections of the good Abd-ur-rahman, and we hope everybody will be as anxious for the "secret of wisdom" as he was. It is told in Mr. Layard's book. In the enterprise, sagacity, patience, and indomitable energy, which will be found in these volumes, the secret is for all to read. This is the magic, these are the prophets. Where there is no wisdom but in knives, scissors, and chintzes, such things will continue to be foolishness; but England, for all that the excellent Arab may have been told, contains something more and better than even Birmingham and Manchester. The Arab hit the peculiarity of Mr. Layard's discoveries in dwelling most on their subterranean character. In an eloquent passage at the opening tion. "There is nothing to relieve the mind, to lead to hope, or to tell of what has gone by." In the midst of our modern scene the lively Greek still reigns and governs, by what is left, in mental and material form, of his wondrous civilization. The Assyrian has passed away. His arts, letters, and life, have vanished from the earth. Those unshapely silent barrows are all that mark where the city of the rulers of half the earth once stood: and over them twelve centuries of Arabs have pitched their tents without thought of a palace under ground." We think it was the traveller Niebuhr who first conjectured that a great city might have stood beneath the sullen range of hills and hillocks on the east bank of the Tigris. It was a countryman of our own who first announced his belief that actual ruins might yet be found there, and yield up some day the vanished marvels of the past. So matters stood till about five years ago. M. Botta was then appointed French Consul at Mosul. The nephew of the celebrated historian of Italy, he had inherited his antiquarian tastes, and, after various unproductive researches on the bank of the Tigris, the supposed site of the ancient city, his perseverance was rewarded by a most remarkable discovery in a little village (Khorsabad) near Mosul. He came upon what evidently appears to have been a palace built in the neighborhood of Nineveh by one of its great monarchs, and covered with sculptures commemorating the glories of his reign. Mr. Layard was at this time in the East, with which several years' previous wanderings had made him familiar; and had passed through Mosul on his way to Constantinople during M. Botta's unsuccessful investigations. He urged M. Botta to persevere, and subsequently, ignorant of his success elsewhere, wrote to him from Constantinople to suggest the great mound of Nimroud, a village on the Tigris eighteen miles below Mosul, as likely to prove the richest scene of discovery. This Nimroud had long been in Mr. Layard's thoughts and hopes, and some years before he had proposed an examination of it to an architect attached to the French embassy in Persia. But M. Botta, already repulsed in that direction and now successful in another, resisted these importunities, (renewed more strongly when what he had succeeded in was known,) preferred to limit himself to his discovery in Khorsabad, tan,) to distinguish him from his celebrated prede * Rich's Travels in Koordistan. steadily completed his researches on that spot, and identified his name with the first Assyrian monument that had seen the light for nearly three thousand years. Let all due honor be paid always to this distinguished Frenchman. Mr. Layard would not surrender Nimroud, nevertheless. He went about possessed with its idea. Few encouraged him, yet he refused to abandon it. At last he got a hearing from that English minister whose name is not more honored for eminent po litical abilities and services, than for services rendered in enriching his country with a series of the most ancient monuments of art. Sir Stratford Canning, ever eager to promote great and good undertakings, supplied from his private purse the means to enable Mr. Layard to commence excavations at Nimroud. And beneath Nimroud was discovered Nineveh! We are now to speak of the contents of Mr. Layard's book, wherein the whole wondrous narrative is given; and whether its more surprising interest is in the discovery itself, or in the difficulties and intrigues which had to be overcome in the course of it, we should be greatly at a loss to say. We can give but few specimens of either, but they will stimulate the reader's curiosity to ascertain all. We repeat that there has been no such picture in any modern book of travels. Park is not braver or more adventurous, Burckhardt is not more truthful, Eothen not more gay and pic comes. turesque, than the hero of the book before us. Mr. Layard is the centre of wild groups of gesticulating and screaming Arabs and Chaldæans, whom he turns to the most patient and persevering workmen, to whom he endears himself by his justice and courage, and whose protector he beSheikhs and chieftains gather round him, attracted by the incomprehensible oddity of his subterranean proceedings. Some to be friendly with him, whom he teaches to be proud of his friendship; some to wheedle presents from him, which without a jot of offence he manages to refuse; some to plunder him, whom he exposes, arrests, and punishes, in the very teeth of their armed followers. The most rascally of Turkish pashas, the most pious of Arab Mussulmans, find their match in Mr. Layard; yet with as little affectation of piety as of rascality to help him. The secret, when known, seems a simple one. He never puts himself beneath the level of Turk or Arab, be he governor or robber; he is either equal or superior to all with whom he is brought into contact. If the cadi and the ulema, in other words the lawyers and parsons, are able to intrigue now and then successfully against him, it is because they shrewdly keep themselves altogether out of his way. Here is a sketch of the Governor of Mosul, to whom Mr. Layard brought letters from Constantinople : Mohammed Pasha, being a native of Candia, was usually known as Keritli Oglu, (the son of the Cre cessor of the same name, who was called, during his lifetime, " Injeh Bairakdar," or the Little Standard-bearer, from the rank he had once held in the irregular cavalry. The appearance of his excellency was not prepossessing, but it matched his temper and conduct. Nature had placed hypocrisy beyond his reach. He had one eye and one ear; he was short and fat, deeply marked by the small-pox, uncouth in gestures and harsh in voice. His fame had reached the seat of his government before him. and impositions, which the reforming spirit of the On the road he had revived many good old customs age had suffered to fall into decay. He particularly insisted on dish-parassi; or a compensation in money, 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. On entering Mosul, he had induced several of the principal aghas who had fled from the town on his approach, to return to their homes; and having made a formal display of oaths and protestations, cut their throats to show how much his word could be depended upon. the time of my arrival, the population was in a state of terror and despair. Even the appearance of a casual traveller led to hopes, and reports were whispered about the town of the deposition of the tyrant. Of this the pasha was aware, and hit upon a plan to test the feelings of the people towards him. He was suddenly taken ill one afternoon, and was carried to his harem almost lifeless. On the following morning the palace was closed, and the attendants answered inquiries by mysterious motions, which could only be interpreted in one fashion. The At doubts of the Mosuleeans gradually gave way to A who had posted his spies all over the town, apgeneral rejoicings; but at mid-day his excellency, peared in perfect health in the market-place. general trembling seized the inhabitants. His vengeance fell principally upon those who possessed property, and had hitherto escaped his rapacity. They were seized and stripped, on the plea that they had spread reports detrimental to his au thority. The worthy man was curious to know what the Frank had come for, but the Frank did not enlighten him. His letters presented and the interview over, he straightway betook himself to a rast on the Tigris, accompanied by a British merchant (Mr. Ross) resident in Mosul; floated down to Nimroud, picking up a poor but intelligent Arab sheikh by the way, and obtaining by his means six Arab workmen; and then, with an excited brain more than ever full of visions of palaces, gigantic monsters, sculptured figures, and endless inscriptions, began his work. In the course of the first morning, what was evidently the top of a chamber was discovered; and before the close of the second evening, Mr. Layard found himself standing in a room built of alabaster slabs, the centres of which were covered with writing. The Arabs meanwhile were lost in amazement as to what the motives of this earth-digging Frank could possibly be. Till at last In the rubbish near the bottom of the chamber, I found several ivory ornaments, upon which were traces of gilding; amongst them was the figure of a man in long robes, carrying in one hand the the land of their nativity: * * * captains and Egyptian crux ansata, part of a crouching sphinx, rulers clothed most gorgeously, horsemen riding and flowers designed with great taste and elegance. upon horses, all of them desirable young men." Awad, who had his own suspicions of the object On these wonders Mr. Layard sits silently mediof my search, which he could scarcely persuade himself was limited to mere stones, carefully col- tating, as well he may, when in comes Daoud lected all the scattered fragments of gold leaf he Agha, (chief of the pasha's irregulars, and the spy from whom he got the gold leaf,) and in a long hyperbolical speech says he must stop the excavations. Away rode Mr. Layard at once into Mosul, startled the unprepared pacha into disavowal of Daoud, and hastened back again to Nimroud. Then close upon his heels comes Daoud with fresh orders, and back hurries Mr. could find in the rubbish; and, calling me aside in a mysterious and confidential fashion, produced them wrapped up in a piece of dingy paper. "O bey," said he, "Wallah! your books are right, and the Frauks know that which is hid from the true believer. 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 those Arabs, for they are asses and cannot hold their tongues. The matter Layard once more to the lying son of the Cretan. will come to the ears of the pasha." The sheikh "It was with deep regret," said the old rascal was much surprised, and equally disappointed, when taken again by surprise, and forgetting his former had collected, and all such as he might hereafter abuse of the grave-protecting ulema and cadi, “I learnt, after your departure yesterday, that the mound in which you are digging had been used I generously presented him with the treasures he discover. He left me, muttering "Yia Rubbi!" and other pious ejaculations, and lost in conjectures as to the meaning of these strange proceedings. as a burying-ground by Mussulmans, and was A few days later, having now made the grounds of his experiment reasonably sure, Mr. Layard galloped back to Mosul, which he found in great excitement from the manœuvres of a rogue of a cadi, who had exaggerated the reports of the gold leaf to excite the cupidity of the townsfolk, and was getting up a riot against the British vice-consulate on pretence that the Franks were going to buy up the whole of Turkey. "Wallah!" exclaimed the pasha to Mr. Layard, (who had found him still busily collecting pecuniary damage for the insult of his subjects in laughing at his death,) "does that ill-conditioned fellow (the cadi) think that he has Sheriff Pasha to deal with, that he must be planning a riot in the town? When I was at Sivas the ulema tried to excite the people because I encroached upon a burying-ground. But I made them eat dirt. Wallah! I took every gravestone and built up the castle walls with them." This was highly satisfactory to Mr. Layard; but presently after, on the worthy "son of the Cretan" professing his utter ignorance of the Nimroud excavations, he knew what to expect; and shaping his own remarks accordingly, was very soon presented by the pasha with an even dirtier piece of paper than Awad's, wherein lay an almost invisible particle of gold leaf. Hereupon Mr. Layard unreservedly promised him all the precious metals he should discover, and went back to Nimroud with assurance of protection. covered with their graves; now you are aware that by the law it is forbidden to disturb a tomb, and the cadi and mufti have already made representations to me on the subject." To this Mr. Layard replied, in the first place, with a solemn assurance that no graves had been disturbed. "In the second place," he continued, "after the wise and firm politica which your excellency exhibited at Sivas, grave-stones would present no difficulty. Please God, the cadi and mufti have profited by the lesson which your excellency gave to the illmannered ulema of that city." "Ah!" retorted the pacha, seeing his blunder, "in Sivas I had Mussulmans to deal with, but here we have only Kurds and Arabs, and Wallah! they are beasts. No, I cannot allow you to proceed. You are my dearest and most intimate friend: if anything happens to you, what grief should I not suffer? Your life is more valuable than old stones. Besides, the responsibility would fall upon my head." Mr. Layard was fain to ride back to Nimroud, content with permission to copy the inscriptions and figures already discovered; and great was his surprise, on coming to the mound, to find gravestones really disturbed, such as before he had not noted. Daoud Agha had been at work during the night. He confessed the trick afterwards. "We have destroyed more real tombs of the true believers," said he, "in making sham ones, than you could have defiled between the Zab and Selamiyah. We have killed our horses and ourselves in carrying those accursed stones." The workmen were now increased by several Chaldeans, and the work went on bravely. ChamBy a happy accident alone was Mr. Layard enber revealed itself after chamber, and at length, abled to resume. The pasha received sudden amid wild screamings of the Arabs and to his own dismissal, and a successor "of the new school" breathless contentment, bas reliefs and painted took his place. The last time Mr. Layard saw sculptures were exposed to view, and he began the son of the Cretan, he was sitting in a dilapito see what Ezekiel describes Aholibah to have dated chamber, through which the rain penetrated seen, thousands of years ago. "She saw men without hindrance: and for the moment adversity portrayed upon the wall, the images of the Chal- had made even this lying rascal pathetic and re deans portrayed with vermilion. Girded with girdles upon their loins, exceeding in dyed attire upon their heads, all of them princes to look to, after the manner of the Babylonians of Chaldea, spectable. "Thus it is with God's creatures," said he: "yesterday all those dogs were kissing my feet; to-day every one, and everything, falls upon me, even the rain!" Let us not leave him and his tricks without mentioning that the grave- | rode to the mound, to satisfy himself of the truth disturbing objection met Mr. Layard at a later of these inconceivable reports. When they beheld point in his researches, in a downright serious form. He came upon real graves, and sincere Mussulmen objected. But we never find Mr. Layard without a resource. How could the tombs be possibly the tombs of true believers, said he, and their feet not turned to Mecca? An elaborate argument on this head satisfied his pious laborers, and their work went on. Such, and so various, were the interruptionssudden strokes of success bringing often the most the head they all cried together, "There is no God tallest date tree; this is one of the idols which Noah, peace be with him! cursed before the flood." In this opinion, the result of a careful examination, all the bystanders concurred. serious of all. Here is a curious instance. The I now ordered a trench to be dug due south from day after the discovery of the first full-length painted and sculptured figures, Mr. Layard went to visit a neighboring Arab chief, to guard against the plundering propensities of his tribe. On the morning following these discoveries, 1 rode to the encampment of Sheikh Abd-ur-rahman, and was returning to the mound, when I saw two Arabs of his tribe urging their mares to the top of their speed. On approaching me they stopped. "Hasten, O Bey," exclaimed one of them, "hasten to the diggers, for they have found Nimrod himself. Wallah, it is wonderful, but it is true! we have seen him with our eyes. There is no God but God;" and both joining in this pious exclamation, they galloped off, without further words in the direction of their tents. On reaching the ruins I descended into the new trench, and found the workmen, who had already seen me, as I approached, standing near a heap of baskets and cloaks. Whilst Awad advanced and asked for a present to celebrate the occasion, the Arabs withdrew the screen they had hastily constructed, and disclosed an enormous human head sculptured in full out of the alabaster of the country. They had uncovered the upper part of a figure, the remainder of which was still buried in the earth. I saw at once that the head must belong to a winged lion or bull, similar to those of Khorsabad and Persepolis. It was in admirable preservation. The expression was calm, yet majestic, and the outline of the features showed a freedom and knowledge of art, scarcely to be looked for in the works of so remote a period. The cap had three horns, and, unlike that of the human-headed bulls hitherto found in Assyria, was rounded and without ornament at the top. I was not surprised that the Arabs had been amazed and terrified at this apparition. It required no stretch of imagination to conjure up the most strange fancies. This gigantic head, blanched with age, thus rising from the bowels of the earth, might well have belonged to one of those fearful beings which are pictured in the traditions of the country, as appearing to mortals, slowly ascending from the regions below. One of the workmen, on catching the first glimpse of the monster, had thrown down his basket and run off towards Mosul as fast as his legs could carry him. I learnt this with regret, as I anticipated the consequences. Whilst I was superintending the removal of the earth, which still clung to the sculpture, and giving directions for the continuation of the work, a noise of horsemen was heard, and presently Abd-ur-rahman, followed by half his tribe, appeared on the edge of the trench. As soon as the two Arabs had reached the tents, and published the wonders they had seen, every one mounted his mare and the head, in the expectation of finding a corresponding figure, and before nightfall reached the object of my search about twelve feet distant. Engaging two or three men to sleep near the sculptures, I returned to the village and celebrated the day's discovery by a slaughter of sheep, of which all the Arabs near partook. As some wandering musicians chanced to be at Selamiyah. I sent for them, and dances were kept up during the greater part of the night. On the following morning Arabs from the other side of the Tigris, and the inhabitants of the surrounding villages congregated on the mound. Even the women could not repress their curiosity, and came in crowds, with their children, from afar. My cawass was stationed during the day in the trench, into which I would not allow the multitude to descend. As I had expected, the report of the discovery of the gigantic head, carried by the terrified Arab to Mosul, had thrown the town into commotion. He had scarcely checked his speed before reaching the bridge. Entering breathless into the bazars, he announced to every one he met that Nimrod had appeared. The news soon got to the ears of the cadi, who, anxious for a fresh opportunity to annoy me, called the mufti and the ulema together, to consult upon this unexpected occurrence. tions ended in a procession to the governor, and a for Their delibera mal protest, on the part of the Mussulmans of the town, against proceedings so directly contrary to the laws of the Koran. The cadi had no distinct idea whether the bones of the mighty hunter had been uncovered, or only his image: nor did Ismail Pasha very clearly remember whether Nimrod was a true-believing prophet, or an infidel. I consequently received a somewhat unintelligible message from his excellency, to the effect that the remains should be treated with respect, and be by no means further disturbed, and that he wished the excavations to be stopped at once, and desired to confer with me on the subject. To this let us add Mr. Layard's subsequent reflection on this most memorable discovery : I ascertained by the end of March the existence of a second pair of winged human-headed lions, differing from those previously discovered in form, the human shape being continued to the waist and furnished with arms. In one hand each figure carried a goat or stag, and in the other, which hung down by the side, a branch with three flowers. They formed a northern entrance into the chamber of which the lions previously described were the southern portal. I completely uncovered the latter, and found them to be entire. They were about twelve feet in height, and the same number in length. The body and limbs were admirably portrayed; the muscles and bones, although strongly |