drawn up by a notary of those who were present at this discovery, which was made upon St. Martin's day.

Every great and original action has a prospective greatness-not alone from the thought of the man who achieves it, but from the various aspects and high thoughts which the same action will continue to present and call up in the minds of others to the end, it may be, of all time. And so a remarkable event may go on acquiring more and more significance. In this case, our knowledge that the Pacific, which Vasco Nunez then beheld, occupies more than onehalf of the earth's surface, is an element of thought which in our minds lightens up and gives an awe to this first gaze of his upon those mighty waters. To him the scene might not at that moment have suggested much more than it would have done to a mere conqueror; indeed Peter Martyr likens Vasco Nunez to Hannibal showing Italy to

his soldiers.

Having thus addressed his men, Vasco Nunez proceeded to take formal possession, on behalf of the kings of Castille, of the sea, and of all that was in it; and, in order to make memorials of the event, he cut down trees, formed crosses, and heaped up stones. He also inscribed the names of the monarchs of Castille upon great trees in the vicinity.

The Spanish Conquest of America, Vol. i. Book vi. Ch. i.

AUSTEN HENRY LAYARD, D.C.L., M.P.,

exca

grandson of the Rev. Dr. Layard, Dean of Bristol, was born in Paris, 1817; visited Asia Minor, Persia, etc., about 1840, and a few years later discovered the ruins of Nineveh, near Mosul; subsequently, under the auspices of Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, and in conjunction with M. Botta, made vations at Nimroud, where he found monuments marked with cuneiform inscriptions, and colossal emblematic figures in the form of winged bulls and lions" (now deposited in the British Museum), "memorials of a civilization which existed before the commencement of profane history;" Attaché to the Embassy at Constantinople, 1849; Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, 1852, and again August, 1861, to June, 1866; M.P., 1852-57, and 1860 et seq.; Lord Rector of Aberdeen University, 1855-56; Trustee of the British Museum, 1866; Commissioner of Public Works, 1868; Ambassador to Spain, 1869.

Nineveh and its Remains: Researches and

Discoveries in Ancient Assyria, with the Narrative of a Residence in that Country, and Excursions to the Valleys of the Nestorian Christians, etc., Lond., 1848, 2 vols. 8vo, 6th edit., 1850, 2 vols. 8vo (discoveries in 1845-46); The Monuments of Nineveh ; illustrated from numerous drawings made on the spot, Lond., 1850, imp. fol., 10 Parts, 100 plates, £10 10s.; A Popular Account of Layard's Expedition to Nineveh, abridged by the author, Lond., 1851, er. 8vo; Fresh Discoveries at Nineveh, and Researches at Babylon: being the Results of the Second Expedition to Assyria [1849-51]: also A Journey to the Khabour, The Desert, Lake Van, Ancient Armenia, Kurdistan, and the Borders of the Euphrates, Lond., 1853, 2 vols. 8vo. See (London) Quart. Rev., Dec. 1848; Fraser's Mag., April, 1849; N. Brit. Rev., May, 1853.

EXCAVATIONS AT NIMROUD.

I had slept little during the night. The hovel in which we had taken shelter, and its inmates, did not invite slumber; but such scenes and companions were not new to me: they could have been forgotten had my brain been less excited. Hopes, long cherished, were now to be realized, or were to end in disappointment. Visions of palaces under ground, of gigantic monsters, of sculptured figures, and endless inscriptions, floated

before me.

After forming plan after plan for removing the earth, and extricating these treasures, I fancied myself wandering in a maze of chambers from which I could find no outlet. Then again, all was re-buried, and I was standing on the grass-covered mound. Exhausted, I was at length sinking into sleep, when hearing the voice of Awad, I rose from my carpet, and joined him outside the hovel.

The day already dawned; he had returned with six Arabs, who agreed for a small sum to work under my direction.

The lofty cone and broad mound of Nimroud broke like a distant mountain on the morning sky. But how changed was the scene since my former visit! The ruins were no longer clothed with verdure and many-coloured flowers; no signs of habitation, not even the black tent of the Arab, was seen upon the plain. The eye wandered over a parched and barren waste, across which occasionally swept the whirlwind dragging with it a cloud of sand. About a mile from us was the small village of Nimroud, like Naifa, a heap of ruins.-

Twenty minutes' walk brought us to the principal mound. The absence of all vegetation enabled me to examine the remains with which it was covered. Broken pot

tery and fragments of bricks, both inscribed with the cuneiform character, were strewed on all sides. The Arabs watched my motions as I wandered to and fro, and observed with surprise the objects I had collected. They joined, however, in the search, and brought me handfuls of rubbish, amongst which I found with joy the fragment of a bas-relief. The material on which it was carved had been exposed to fire, and resembled, in every aspect, the burnt gypsum of Khorsabad. Convinced from this discovery that sculptured remains must still exist in some part of the mound, I sought for a place where excavations might be commenced with a prospect of success. Awad led me to a piece of alabaster which appeared above the soil. We could not remove it. and on digging downward, it proved to be the upper part of a large slab. I ordered all the men to work round it, and they shortly uncovered a second slab to which it had been united. Continuing in the same line, we came upon a third; and in the course of the morning laid bare ten more, the whole forming a square, with one stone missing at the N. W. corner. It was evident that the top of a chamber had been discovered, and down the face of the stones, and an inscripthat the gap was its entrance. I now dug tion in the cuneiform character was soon ex

posed to view. Similar inscriptions occupied

the centre of all the slabs, which were in the best preservation; but plain, with the exception of the writing. Leaving half the

workmen to uncover as much of the chamber as possible, I led the rest to the S. W. corner of the mound, where I had observed many fragments of calcined alabaster.

I dug at once into the side of the mound, which was here very steep, and thus avoided the necessity of removing much earth. We came almost immediately to a wall, bearing inscriptions in the same character as those already described; but the slabs had evidently been exposed to intense heat, were cracked in every part, and, reduced to lime, threatened to fall into pieces as soon as uncovered.

Night interrupted our labours. I returned to the village well satisfied with their result. It was now evident that buildings of considerable extent existed in the mound; and that although some had been destroyed by fire, others had escaped the conflagration. As there were inscriptions, and as a fragment of a bas-relief had been found, it was natural to conclude that sculptures were still buried under the soil. I determined to follow the search at the N. W. corner, and to empty the chamber partly uncovered during the day.

Nineveh and its Remains, Vol. i. Ch. ii.

CONFIRMATION OF THE SCRIPTURES. Doubtless, if I had undertaken these excavations with no other end than that of gratifying an idle curiosity or an ordinary spirit of enterprise, I should be utterly unI trust they were embarked in from a higher worthy of the honour you have shown me. motive. Archæology, if pursued in a liberal spirit, becomes of the utmost importance, as illustrating the history of mankind. [Great applause.] I confess that, sanguine as I was as to the results of my researches amongst could not, nor, indeed, probably could any the ruins on the Tigris and Euphrates, I human being, have anticipated the results self-praise. I consider myself but an humwhich they produced. I do not say this in labour successfully in bringing about those ble agent, whose good fortune it has been to ful of earth which was removed from those results. I could not doubt that every spade

vast remains would tend to confirm the truth

of prophecy and to illustrate the meaning of Scripture. But who could have believed

that records themselves should have been found which, as to the minuteness of their details, and the wonderful accuracy of their member that these were no fabrications of statements, should confirm almost word for word the very text of Scripture? And re

the deeds which they professed to relate had taken place, but records engraved by those who had actually taken part in them. Speech on the Occasion of the Presentation to Dr. Layard of the Freedom of the City of London, Feb. 9, 1854.

a later date in monuments centuries after

JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE, born at Totness, Devonshire, 1818, was educated at Westminster and the University of Oxford, where he obtained the Chancellor's Prize for the English Essay in 1842, and the same year was elected Fellow of Exeter College.

Shadow of the Clouds, Lond., 1847, 8vo (a novel); The Nemesis of Faith, Lond., 1848, 2d edit.. 1849, p. 8vo (a theologico-philosophical novel); The Book of Job, Lond., 1854, p. 8vo; History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Defeat of the Spanish Armada, Lond., 1856-70, 12 vols. 8vo, and cr. 8vo, New York, 1870-72, 12 vols. cr. 8vo; Short Studies on Great Subjects, 1868-71, 2 vols. 8vo, and cr. 8vo; The English in Ireland in the Eighteenth Century, 1872-74, 3 vols. 8vo; Thomas à Becket, 1878; Julius Caesar, a Sketch, 1879. He contributed to the Lives of the English Saints, and was for a short time, in 1871, editor of Fraser's Magazine.

"The peculiar merit of Mr. Froude's work [History of England] is its wealth of unpublished manuscripts; and the reign of Elizabeth is remarkably illustrated by the correspondence of the Spanish ambassadors and other agents of the court of Spain, which have been preserved in the Archives at Simancas. The extraordinary interest of such illustrations is apparent in every page of these volumes: they give novelty to the narrative and variety to the well-known incidents of the time; and they bring in aid of historical evidence the contemporary opinions of society upon current events.-Edin. Rev., Sept. 1866. See also Fraser's Mag., May, 1849, July, 1856, July and Sept. 1858, July, 1860; N. Brit. Rev., Nov. 1856; Edin. Rev., July, 1858, Jan. 1864; London Quar. Rev., Oct. 1863; Brit. Quar. Rev., Jan. and April, 1864; Hosack's Defence of Mary, Queen of Scots; Lecky's History of the Eighteenth Century.

EARLY CHARACTER OF HENRY VIII.

If Henry VIII. had died previous to the first agitation of the divorce, his loss would have been deplored as one of the heaviest misfortunes which had ever befallen the country; and he would have left a name which would have taken its place in history by the side of that of the Black Prince or the conqueror of Agincourt. Left at the nost trying age, with his character unformed, with the means at his disposal of gratifying every inclination, and married by his ministers when a boy to an unattractive woman far his senior, he had lived for thirtysix years almost without blame, and bore through England the reputation of an upright and virtuous king. Nature had been prodigal to him of her rarest gifts. In person he is said to have resembled his grandfather, Edward IV., who was the handsomest man in Europe. His form and bearing were princely; and amidst the easy freedom of his address, his manner remained majestic. No knight in England could match him in the tournament except the Duke of Suffolk: he drew with ease as strong a bow as was borne by any yeoman of his guard; and these powers were sustained in unfailing vigour by a temperate habit and by constant exercise. Of his intellectual ability we are not left to judge from the suspicious panegyrics of his contemporaries. His state papers and letters may be placed by the side of those of Wolsey or of Cromwell, and they lose nothing in the comparison. Though they are broadly different, the perception is equally clear, the expression equally powerful, and they breathe throughout an irresistible vigour of purpose. In addition to this he had a fine musical taste, carefully cultivated; he spoke and wrote in four languages; and his knowledge of a multitude of other subjects, with which his versatile ability made him conversant, would have formed the reputation of any ordinary

man. He was among the best physicians of his age; he was his own engineer, inventing improvements in artillery, and new constructions in ship-building; and this not with the condescending incapacity of a royal amateur, but with thorough workmanlike understanding. His reading was vast. especially in theology, which has been ridiculously ascribed by Lord Herbert to his father's intention of educating him for the Archbishopric of Canterbury: as if the scientific mastery of such a subject could have been acquired by a boy of twelve years of age, for he was no more when he became Prince of Wales. He must have studied theology with the full maturity of his intellect; and he had a fixed and perhaps unfortunate interest in the subject itself."

In all directions of human activity Henry displayed natural powers of the highest order, at the highest stretch of industrious culture. He was "attentive," as it is called, "to his religious duties," being present at the services in chapel two or three times a day with unfailing regularity, and showing to outward appearance a real sense of religious obligation in the energy and purity of his life. In private he was good-humoured and good-natured. His letters to his secretaries, though never undignified, are simple. easy, and unrestrained; and the letters written by them to him are similarly plain and business-like, as if the writers knew that the person whom they were addressing disliked compliments, and chose to be treated as a man. Again, from their correspondence with one another, when they describe interviews with him, we gather the same pleasant impression. He seems to have been always kind, always considerate; inquiring into their private concerns with genuine interest, and winning, as a consequence, their warm and unaffected attach

ment.

As a ruler he had been eminently popular. All his wars had been successful. He had the splendid tastes in which the English people most delighted, and he had substantially acted out his own theory of his duty which was expressed in the following words:

"Scripture taketh princes to be, as it were, fathers and nurses to their subjects, and by Scripture it appeareth that it appertaineth unto the office of princes to see that right religion and true doctrine be maintained and taught, and that their subjects may be well ruled and governed by good and just laws; and to provide and care for them that all things necessary for them may be plenteous; and that the people and commonweal may increase; and to defend them from oppression and invasion, as well within the realm as without; and to see that justice be adminis