"Episcopal Reform, by an Anglican Layman," and that they are spoken of so contemptuously at Manchester meetings and elsewhere. Men feel that they have no fixed principles whatever to guide them, and that their whole course consequently is one of compromises and insincere expedients.

It is impossible that Bishops should not have seen what all this agitation meant: it is impossible they should not have seen the folly of asking Roman Catholics to respect the Queen's Supremacy, or of letting Dissenters join with Churchmen in a professed adherence to it. They must know what the Queen's Supremacy means. It is a power conceded by the Church of England to the Sovereign of this country-and has nothing whatever to do with those who are without the communion of the English Church. Dissenters have all along protested against it: Roman Catholics cast it in our teeth. A very general feeling has arisen among Churchmen from the experience of the last few years, that if not unwisely conceded at the first, it has now been strained to a point that is well nigh unendurable and now we have the Bishops-by name the fathers and guardians of the Church-vieing with each other in tightening these chains, recommending the clergy to preach controversial sermons in its behalf, every word of which will recoil upon the preachers and wound Christian charity; or with a degree of feebleness and fatuity which would seem to be almost judicial, recommending them to make additional collections for the Propagation or the Pastoral Aid Society!

If we mistake not, "the societies," (as well as all works of mercy) will be the first to feel the effects of this chilling blast of mingled bigotry and infidelity.

We

Upon what should have been the nature of these addresses, there are some sensible remarks which we had marked for quotation in Mr. Maberly's "Few words on the mode of improving present opportunities," (Masters,) but our limits forbid. will now say a few words about the concessions which Bishops and others are demanding of parish priests in various parts of the kingdom. Very many persons seem to imagine that it is the rubrical quarrel over again. Now we are anxious to point out that there is an essential and fundamental difference between the two cases. The movement to observe rubrics literally was the fruit of a hard, matter-of-fact, Anglican spirit, which inquired only what the rubric said, and proceeded at once to obey, non obstante as well the feeling of the congregation as Catholic ritual propriety. It was an effort of honest, but not very well instructed zeal, and so failed to commend itself as well to the minds of the highest Catholic tone, as to the feelings of the public. We do not mean that many of the points insisted on were not in every aspect desirable and right. But this was not the case with all; and a dogged adherence to the letter of a rubric to the neglect of the voice of that Catholic interpretation, which should be its life,

tended to cast a disrepute upon the movement as a whole. It originated in a desire to absolve the conscience of the individual priest, rather than to render the service edifying and significant. Consequently when Bishops took upon themselves the dispensing power, and said that they could and would release them from the obligation to obey the letter of the law, the clergy by degrees and somewhat reluctantly gave way.

At the present time we hold it is not a dispute about words, but about things and the saving of men's souls. What is called Ritualism is in plain language such a manner of conducting the Divine Offices, as shall be most expressive of their real spirit, and consequently the best aid to the worshippers in the direction of their devotions. Whatever is not referable to, and does not flow from this principle, is not genuine Catholic Ritualism; but so long as it has this end in view, and is well adapted for promoting it, a parish priest cannot surely be asked to give it up, or warranted in so doing. It would be to sacrifice the edification, and ultimately the salvation of his people: it would be to give up that which at the present time is most especially needed; for how can any one look at the state of our congregations and not perceive that they are sadly strangers to reverence and devotion? The bringing the Altar out into its due prominence, as the symbol of God's especial Presence, and the scene (so to speak) for the enactment of the chief Act of Christian worship, and the arranging of the Services in such a manner as they shall most evidently appear to be the oblation of the whole Church to GOD, and the distinguishing them by the intonation of the voice and the posture of the body, and by all external marks, from everything of a secular kind :--these are significant and necessary means for attaining what all profess to be desiring, and cannot be abandoned to please either Bishop or populace. Of course let all this be done prudently and discreetly, and with all possible respect to the ignorance or prejudices of the congregation, and let it be accompanied by earnest and, if you will, impassioned appeals to the conscience from the pulpit; but we must not suffer our people on any account to be robbed of this their legitimate inheritance. A congregation peradventure may not be made more spiritual by hearing sermons preached in surplice rather than in gown, or by the use of the prayer for the whole estate of CHRIST'S Church after the sermon, when that prayer is taken apart from its proper connection with the Eucharistic Sacrifice; but a Service properly ordered has a direct and immediate influence upon the whole inner man; it elevates the soul to GOD, and so attracts His HOLY SPIRIT into it; it is in every way more effectual than the most moving sermon. We speak here from experience; and we are sure there will be but one opinion on the subject with all who have made the trial.

It is encouraging to find that Churchmen are still not losing

heart. Two new Periodicals have just started in defence of sound principles, one a cheap weekly Newspaper, called "the Protector;" the other, "the Penny Post," a monthly Magazine, which gives for the small sum named in its title, no fewer than thirty-two closely printed pages. We quite believe the Managers when they tell us that it will require a sale of 60,000 at least, in order to bear them harmless. But surely if Churchmen set about it in earnest they can create a much larger sale than this.

BABYLON, NINEVEH, AND PERSEPOLIS.

(Continued from Vol. X. p. 362.)

THE excavations were recommenced on the 1st of November, and were continued with the utmost success. Not only were sculptures and bas-reliefs still discovered, but portions of armour, iron, and copper, mostly in an advanced state of decay, together with alabaster and glass vases, rewarded Mr. Layard's search; and on Christmas-day, 1846, he had the satisfaction of despatching twentythree cases of antiquities to Bagdad by the river, for transmission to England, by way of Bombay. The works did not stop here; further excavations brought to light no less than twenty-eight chambers in the north-west part of the mound, all of them cased with carved slabs of alabaster, decorated principally with representations of Assyrian Kings, attended by winged genii, and priestly figures. In one of the chambers were found many ornaments of ivory of considerable beauty: owing to their age, and the casualties to which they had been exposed, the material of which they were composed had been entirely deprived of the gelatine which caused it to cohere. Any attempt to remove the earth which encircled them resulted in their crumbling to pieces; many were consequently transmitted to England in the state in which they were originally discovered; and the gelatine being supplied by an ingenious process, they bore the operation of cleaning, and regained their durability. They are now amongst the treasures of the British Museum, and have called forth an interesting paper from Mr. Birch.

Further operations on the western side of the mound led Mr. Layard into a number of tombs, evidently those of royal personages. After removing these, and trying the effect of digging beneath them, he was astonished to discover, at a depth of five feet, the remains of a building, whose walls, like those of the tombs, were composed of sun-dried bricks. Further researches in this

building brought to light a number of slabs similar to those ornamenting the walls of the palaces, but packed together in rows, as if intended to be conveyed away for the decoration of some other building.

This may be taken for a general outline of the operations carried on at Nimroud. Those who wish to follow the discoverer through every step of his proceedings, to enter into the spirit which animated him, and to throw themselves into the marvellous and sometimes grotesque scenes which he witnessed, must apply themselves to his own work. Nothing can be more lucid than its details, nothing more graphic than its descriptions. We look forward with anxiety to the results of the operations now going on, some of which, we understand, have already reached this country. However much we may be disposed to differ from Mr. Layard's theology, and to maintain against him that the difference between Nestorian and Catholic doctrine is one of real and vital importance, and not merely imaginary, we cannot fail to sympathize with him to the utmost in his hopes, disappointments, and successes, and to long for another journey with him. While, however, we refer our readers to his own volumes, it would be unjust to Mr. Vaux, did we omit to mention the very clear and interesting abstract he has made of the traveller's own records. A catalogue raisonnée would certainly have been out of place in a work like that before us; and a judicious outline of the operations supplies the reader with every step he needs to bring him down to the present period of Assyrian hermeneutical history.

The ruins of Nineveh afford at once an unequivocal proof of the agency which reduced them to that state. Nearly all of them exhibit marks of having been exposed to a tremendous conflagration. In some places the slabs which surround the chambers have been calcined, and fall to pieces at a touch; elsewhere the bricks forming the outer wall have been vitrified, so as to make the room present the appearance of a large glass furnace. Here we long for those rego λoyo in which Herodotus' promises to relate the story of the capture of Nineveh. They would have told us whether the fire which destroyed the palaces of Nimroud and Koyunjik was kindled by the kings of Babylon and Media,2 or whether the fall of the great city of three days' journey" was gradual, like that of her sister and rival, Babylon. But the 'Acoúpio Aoyos are not extant, and probably never were written. It seems most probable, that its overthrow by the Medes and Chaldæans was final and complete. At all events, Xenophon's Anabasis describes no city, nothing but ruins, in his account of the place where it once stood; and none of the historians of Alexander's campaigns even allude to it, though his route to Arbela must have passed very near its site. At the end of the fifth century, B.C. no city of Ninus can have been standing. 2 Herod. I. 106, compared with Tobit xiv. 15.

66

1 I. 106.

The character of the Assyrian sculptures is remarkable. They have much in common with the Egyptian paintings, introducing us, just as they do, into the midst of the religious,military, and domestic life of the people. The same rude attempts at producing perspective effects are visible in both; both exhibit alike a monotonous sameness in type of features, arrangement of dress, and other conventionalisms. But still the Ninevite sculptures, whether owing to the difference of national character, or to the more advanced state of art, are possessed of more boldness and spirit, and indeed of more artistic merit, than the Egyptian paintings. One point is very remarkable, the careful and almost exaggerated delineation of the muscles of the men and animals represented. This is often not without its effect in giving a spirited and real appearance, especially to the representations of scenes of warfare.

The effigy of the king, which repeatedly occurs, is, as in Egyptian paintings, at once recognizable, by the air of superior majesty which the sculptor has endeavoured to give to the features, and the care with which the headdress is fashioned. The appearance of the latter, and indeed of the whole costume of the warriors of Nineveh, tallies well with the description of them given us by the prophet Ezekiel, (xxiii. 14, 15.) We do not meet with the multiplicity of monstrous figures which are so remarkable in Egypt, representing the deities of their crowded Pantheon. The Ninevite figures are very simple. The most remarkable is the one we have already alluded to, as being supposed to represent the god Nisroch, mentioned in Holy Scripture. It is a figure otherwise human, but furnished with the head and wings of an eagle, or hawk, whence its name has been inferred, almost all the Semitic languages containing the word nisr, signifying a bird of prey. This figure bears in its hands a pine cone and a sort of basket, two things which involuntarily remind us of the thyrsus and the xavour of the Greek mysteries. Other winged figures also occur, human-headed, and bearing some of them the pine cone and basket, some a flower, some an ear of corn and an ibex or gazelle. These are supposed to represent inferior deities or priests preparing for sacrifice. Lastly, there are the gigantic figures of lions or bulls, winged, with human. heads, which we have seen to form such a remarkable part of the discoveries both of M. Botta, and Mr. Layard. Most of these show traces of the "painting with vermilion" to which Ezekiel alludes in his description of the idol-figures pourtrayed upon the walls.

What could have been the religion of the Assyrians? It is plain that it must have been one of the very early types of idolatry: the latest date which can possibly be assigned to any of the sculptures, viz. about 630 B.C., precludes us from supposing that any of the 1 Mr. Layard shows very clearly that the words which we render (after the LXX. яараВаятά) "exceeding in dyed attire," may accurately be translated with flowing coverings" or turbans, cidares inclinatæ.