work has been done of late years by the various publishing societies, has so much raised the standard that the public are no longer satisfied with such editing as was formerly thought amply sufficient. Any one who examines into the manner in which Jeremy Taylor's Works are now being edited at Oxford must see that the scrupulous accuracy with which the text is collated, and the minute care with which every reference is verified, require as much labour and as much learning as a new edition of Herodotus, or of Suidas, of Thucydides, or Sophocles. It is well known that, by a no very creditable mistake of the delegates of the Oxford press, many of the works which they have published have had no editor at all employed upon them, and it would have been better if Cambridge had selected some one of them rather than have begun with a work which had been at least respectably edited. The doing this necessarily challenges a comparison which in some respects is not advantageous to the present Cambridge editor.

"If any one point has been entirely established by the modern system of editing, it is this, that all the references should be made to the best editions of each author, either to the latest, or to the one which is by common consent allowed to be the best, and such as is likely to be found in every respectable public library. Of the Fathers, the Benedictine editions are acknowledged to be the standards, and as such are invariably referred to by all modern editors who understand their business. I am therefore both disappointed and surprised to find that the Cambridge editor has entirely neglected this rule. In some instances he has referred to the latest editions, as for example Bekker's editions of Aristotle and Eustathius; in others to the best, as Chrysostom and the apostolical Fathers; but in a great number of instances he refers to editions long since superseded by later and better, and allowed on all hands to be entirely obsolete, so that no good library is expected to possess them; and the authors thus neglected are often the most important, such as St. Ambrose, St. Augustine, St. Cyprian, St. Cyril of Jerusalem, Demosthenes and the other Greek orators, Irenæus, Justin Martyr, Leo the Great, Theophylact, Plato, Livy, and others.

"I cannot understand upon what principle Mr. Chevallier has selected his editions, or rather it is clear from his work that his rule must have been that of taking such editions as he could most readily have access to at Durham. It would have been better if the editor of such a work had been located for the time at

Cambridge, or Oxford, or in London, or some place where he could have ready access to the best editions, and the help of learned friends to consult in any difficulties. It is not to be expected that the learning of any one man can enable him to follow in all cases the footsteps of Bishop Pearson." This is a matter in the principle of which we entirely agree with our correspondent. It should be established by common consent as a canon of criticism, and a law of editorial practice, that every editor of a reprint of a standard author is bound to verify the quotations of his original author, and to amend his references by referring to what are allowed to be the best editions of his authorities.

During the vacancy of the laureateship there is more than the customary publication of poetry of various kinds. A Mr. Edward Kenealy-a name almost new in this particular walk of fame-puts forth "Goethe, a new pantomime," a wild combination of Germanism and Irishism. Whether there is in the mind of the writer a sufficient foundation of good sense to uplift his unquestionable poetical faculty above the nonsense that at present confounds and smothers all its efforts, must be left to Time to prove. Mr. T. Westwood has published "The Burden of the Bell and other Lyrics," several of them already rendered familiar to us in periodical publications. It is a pretty book and contains many a pleasant cheerful line. But the book of books in this class bears upon its title "In Memoriam." It contains about one hundred and thirty small poems, sonnets in spirit but not in form, all prompted by one circumstance, the death of a male friend to whom the writer was deeply attached. No one can doubt that the authorship is rightly assigned by rumour to Alfred Tennyson, nor is it questionable that the book contains beautiful poems and exquisite lines. That it also contains poems and lines to which those epithets cannot be justly applied may be easily supposed. The following is an example of the former class. It is No. VIII.

A happy lover who has come

To look on her that loves him well, Who 'lights and rings the gateway bell And learns her gone and far from home, He saddens, all the magic light

Dies off at once from bower and hall, And all the place is dark, and all The chambers emptied of delight. So find I every pleasant spot

In which we two were wont to meet, The field, the chamber, and the street, For all is dark where thou art not.

Yet as that other, wandering there
In those deserted walks may find
A flower beat with rain and wind,
Which once she fostered up with care;
So seems it in my deep regret,

O my forsaken heart, with thee,
And this poor flower of poesy,
Which, little cared for, fades not yet.
But since it pleased a vanish'd eye,
I go to plant it on his tomb,
That if it can it there may bloom,
Or, dying, there at least may die.
It is a shorter one, No.

One more.
XCII.
How pure at heart and sound in head,
With what divine affections bold,
Should be the man whose thought would
hold

An hour's communion with the dead.
In vain shalt thou, or any, call

The spirits from their golden day,
Except, like them, thou too canst say,
Thy spirit is at peace with all.

They haunt the silence of the breast,
Imaginations calm and fair,

The memory like a cloudless air,
The conscience like a sea at rest.
But when the heart is full of din,
And doubt beside the portal waits,
They can but listen at the gates
And hear the household jar within.

There are several other poetical brochures upon our table, but it would be a profanation to intermingle ordinary lines with strains so calmly beautiful as these.

The Meeting of the Archæological Institute has been held too late in the month to be noticed in our present Magazine. We shall give a full report of its proceedings in our next number.

We are indebted to a kind and valued friend for the following extracts from a letter from our old correspondent Plantagenet [DR. BROMET, F.S.A.], dated from Florence the 23rd April, 1850. It was probably one of the last letters which he wrote to England, for he speaks in it of being about to leave Florence for Venice, whence on the 15th June he intended to make his way to Courmayeux, a small cool town at the southern foot of Mont Blanc, and thence, about the 1st September, he proposed to go by way of Turin and Nice to Barcelona, and so to Valencia. News has since reached London that he caught cold in crossing the Apennines, and died probably on his journey to Venice. In the letter to which we have alluded he gives the following notes upon antiquarian matters interesting to Englishmen. His first note gives an account of THE TOMB OF CARDINAL HOW.

D. M.

PHILIPPO THOME HOWARD
DE NORFOLCIE ET ARUNDELIE
S.R.E. PRESBYTERO. CARDINALI
TIT. S. MARIE SUPRA MINERVAM
EX SACRA FAMILIA PRED.

S. MARIE MAIORIS ARCHIPRESBYTERO
MAGNE BRITANNIA PROTECTORI
MAGNO ANGLIE ELEEMOSYNARIO
PATRIE ET PAVPERVM PATRI

FILII PROV. ANGLICANE EJVSDEM OR

DINIS

PEREMPTI ET RESTAVRATORI OPT. HÆREDES INSCRIPTI MÆRENTES POSVERE

ANNVENTIBVS. S.R.E. CARDD. EMM. PAVLVTIO DE ALTETRICI

FRANC. NERLIO

GALEATIO MARESCOTTO.

Dr. Bromet's second note relates to A TOMB OF A BISHOP OF EXETER AT FLORENCE. It is as follows: "In a church at Florence is an incised slab representing under a Gothic canopy a bishop in attitude of benediction, and holding in his left hand a pastoral staff; with this inscription: H. J. JOHANNES CATRIX. epvs. quondam Exon. ambasciator ser. dni. Regis Anglie. q. obiit xxvII. die Decembr. anno dni. MCCCCXIX. cvivs anime propicietur Deus. The armorial bearings are, Sable, three tiger-cats passant. Godwin terms this bishop James Carey, and says of him that he happened to be at Florence with the Pope at what time news was brought thither of the Bishop of Exeter's death, and easily obtained that bishoprick of him, being preferred to Lichfield but very lately. He enjoyed neither of these places any long time, never coming home to see either the one or the other; he died and was buried in Italy." Dr. Bromet's third note mentions that in the CLOISTER OF THE ENGLISH COLLEGE AT ROME are INSCRIPTIONS to the memory of Ricardus Hason (without date), also of Roger Baines dated 1623 (Collect. Topog. v. 87); also a low altar tomb of white marble, and richly adorned with a well-sculptured effigy, in its original condition, excepting the face and part of the mitre, inscribed to the

memory of Christopher Archbishop of York, dated 1514, and on a shield at its foot, enwreathed with bay and ensigned with a cardinal's cap, these arms, viz. 1 and 4, two battle-axes in pale, in chief two mullets; 2 and 3, a squirrel. Also a slab incised with the effigy of Jo. Weddisburi, prior of Worcester, dated 1518. Dr. Bromet's fourth note relates to the series of half-length PORTRAITS of ENGLISH JESUITS executed pro fide catholicâ, which were deposited in the library of the English college, on the departure of the Jesuits from their collegio Romano. sides Campion, Garnet, and Oldcorn, this collection contains portraits of Thomas Holland, executed in 1642; Alexander Bryant, in 1581; Roger Filcock, in 1601; Peter Wright, in 1651; and Thomas Cottam, in 1582.

Be

A very complete map of the Great Northern Coal Field, in the counties of Northumberland and Durham, from actual surveys by I. T. W. Bell, Engineer and Surveyor, of Newcastle, has been lately

published. It is drawn to a scale of one mile to an inch, and is 46 inches by 36 inches in size. It includes the whole of the coal districts of the Tyne, Wear, and Tees, together with those of Hartlepool, Seaham, Hartley, Blyth, and Warkworth; extending from Stockton-upon-Tees and Middlesbro' on the south, to the River Coquet and Warkworth Harbour on the north, and from the German Ocean on the east, inland, to Wolsingham in the county of Durham, and Bywell in the county of Northumberland, comprising an area of about 1100 square miles. The various collieries and colliery railways, public railways, iron works, docks and shipping places, as well as the towns, villages, farms, turnpike and cross roads, boundaries of townships, parishes, boroughs, and counties, and other matters usually shown in maps, are carefully represented. Altogether it forms the most comprehensive and useful Topographical Survey of the Northern Coal Districts that has ever been offered to the public.

Notes from Nineveh, and Travels in Mesopotamia, Assyria, and Syria; by the Rev. J. P. Fletcher. 2 vols. 8vo.

Nineveh and Persepolis; an historical sketch of ancient Assyria and Persia, with an account of the recent researches in those countries. By W. S. Vaux, M.A. 8vo. Mr. Fletcher, the author of the first of these books, went to Mosul in 1842 as lay-assistant to a mission of inquiry into the state of religion and literature among the Christian churches of the East. The missionaries passed to their destination by way of Malta, Constantinople, Samsoun on the Euxine, Tocat and Diarbekir; they remained two years at Mosul, and returned home by Aleppo and Antioch. Upon the subject with which his mission was connected, the author ought of course to be consulted, although

great deal that he has written respecting the doctrines and peculiarities of the Eastern churches is mere compilation which could have been put together without a visit to the East, and, on some modern points in their history, we already possess, in other books, a good deal of important later information. The author makes amends for want of novelty by giving a good many agreeable traits and anecdotes of Eastern manners and customs, with facts indicative of the notions of the Eastern people respecting ourselves, and altogether his book (save the compilations to which we haye alluded) is very readable and amus

ing. With reference to the excavations which have interested all the civilised world in what has been done, and is doing, at Nineveh, Mr. Fletcher is a little behind the fair. For a full and yet popular detail of these interesting and invaluable labours, with an exposition of their bearing upon the history and manners of the ancient world, written in a learned spirit, and with a just appreciation of the labours of Messrs. Botta, Layard, and Rawlinson, we recommend the volume of Mr. Vaux, next to the accounts written by the excavators and elucidators themselves.

M. Botta was appointed to the office of French consul at Mosul in 1842. On his arrival in the East he immediately procured permission and began to excavate in the mounds which were traditionally said to mark the site of Nineveh. His labours were rewarded by the discovery of various ancient monuments, and amongst them many sculptured bas-reliefs. Having reported these results to his government, he was most liberally encouraged to proceed. A supply of money was instantly remitted to him, and M. Flandin, an able antiquarian draughtsman, was despatched from France to make delineations of such monuments as were in too fragile a state to be successfully removed to Europe. Stimulated by such animating countenance, M. Botta pursued his labours in several places for more than twelve months. A vast collection of invaluable antiquities

was laid bare, and in the words of Mr. Vaux, "All which it has been possible to remove have been conveyed to Paris, and form the most ancient, if not the most valuable, of the magnificent collections of antiquities preserved in the Louvre. A noble work has been published at the expense of the French government, containing engravings of all the monuments which have reached France, and of many others which had been too much injured to admit of their removal." Such were the labours of M. Botta, such his encouragements, and such the results: highly honourable all of them, not only to himself but to France.

Mr. Layard first visited Mosul in the spring of 1840. He investigated several of the mounds by which that city is surrounded, and was then first animated by the desire to examine their contents. Two years afterwards he again visited Mosul, and found that M. Botta had entered upon the work. Layard and Botta conferred together respecting their mutual object, and from that time the discoveries of M. Botta" were communicated, with a rare and praiseworthy liberality, to Mr. Layard, almost as fast as they were made." The field was wide enough for both of them, and Botta's successes only stimulated the old desire of Layard, but for a long time he received no encouragement from others. At last, in the autumn of 1845, Sir Stratford Canning mentioned to him his readiness to incur, for a limited period, the expense of the desired excavations. Layard accepted the offer, and entered upon his labour with joy. We cannot now dwell upon the results; probably there are few of our readers who have not seen the first fruits of the liberality of Sir Stratford Canning and of Layard's skill as an antiquarian investigator, which are deposited in the British Museum. The excavations undertaken at the expense of Sir Stratford Canning having come to an end, and Sir Stratford having presented to the nation the singular and valuable remains which had been discovered, it became necessary for the Lords of the Treasury to determine whether the work should be continued or abandoned in its then incomplete condition. The example of France, and the obvious benefits certain to ensue to historical science, would have seemed to render this a question of easy solution. But alas! the fact is continually forced upon us, that neither honourable example nor zeal for science is motive strong enough to arouse the interest of Lords of the Treasury. A beggarly sum was obtained with difficulty. It was expended judiciously, and produced extraordinary discoveries, When it came

The

to an end, Mr. Layard returned to England. General attention was aroused by his publications, and by the specimens of the disinterred sculptures exhibited in a dark cellar of the British Museum. people appreciated what their governors did not. Unexampled thousands flocked to inspect the relics of a far-off antiquity, the East India Company gave Mr. Lay. ard assistance in the publication of a large volume of his drawings, and ultimately the government was roused (we had almost said shamed) into making a grant for some further excavations. These are now in progress under Mr. Layard's directions. But whilst France was able to accomplish an almost immediate transit of M. Botta's discoveries, we, with our " unequalled naval resources," have allowed some of the most valuable of the relics found by Mr. Layard to remain at Busrah for "more than two years, unremoved!"

Contemporaneously with the researches of Messrs. Botta and Layard, there has been proceeding another discovery which may justly be reckoned amongst the wonders of the present age. It is well known that the monuments of ancient Assyria, and especially those of Persepolis, are covered with inscriptions written in characters which are customarily termed, from their peculiar shape, arrow-headed or cuneiformed. These inscriptions have long baffled all the attempts of the decipherer. Even an inquirer so learned and sensible as Dr. Hyde, the professor of Hebrew at Oxford, at the close of the seventeenth century, could make no better suggestion in reference to them than that they owed their origin to the whim of architects, who inscribed them as ornaments. By many antiquaries they were believed to be charms or talismans, or numerical figures. The first person who led the way to the subsequent discoveries respecting their actual character was Professor Grotefend, of Hanover, who as long ago as the year 1800 presented a paper to a literary society in Gottingen, in which he contended that these undecipherable inscriptions were composed of actual alphabetical characters, and laid down certain laws or rules, by the application of which he was subsequently able to make out various proper names. This very much conduced to what has ensued. Major Rawlinson took up the study in 1835, being then resident at Kermanshah in Persia, near the celebrated inscription of Behistun, containing one thousand lines of cuneiform characters, sculptured at the height of three hundred feet on the face of a perpendicular rock, which rises abruptly from the plain to the height of seventeen hundred feet. Major Rawlinson had heard

of Grotefend's discoveries, but did not possess any copy of his work, and was very imperfectly acquainted with the actual results at which he had arrived. Undeterred by the enormous difficulties which must attend investigations in a language and character both entirely unknown, the Major plodded on, and in 1837 had not only made progress in the work of collecting transcripts of the various extant cuneiform inscriptions, but had succeeded in mastering the alphabet, and had penetrated so far into the nature and meaning of the words as to be able to remit to the Asiatic Society a memoir containing a translation of the first two paragraphs of the Behistun inscription. His memoir at once brought him into communication with various oriental scholars in Europe, who had in the mean time been treading in the footsteps of Professor Grotefend, and had arrived at results coincident in the main with those of Major Rawlinson. The chief of these inquirers was Professor Lassen, who, building upon Grotefend's discoveries and laws, had produced an almost entire alphabet, very similar to that of Major Rawlinson. In 1840 the Major was called to Afghanistan, where his labours were directed into another channel. After three years he returned to Bagdad, and resumed his researches. With the assistance of a Danish orientalist, M. Westergaard, he was enabled to add to his collection of cuneiform inscriptions a full copy of that on the rock of Behistun, obtained and verified with great difficulty by M. Westergaard, by the careful study of every letter through a telescope. Major Rawlinson now completed the great achievement of deciphering and translating the whole inscription. It is published entire, with translations in Latin and English, and with a drawing of the rock and the sculpture, in Major Rawlinson's memoir, printed in vol. X. of the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society. Here, then, at the very moment of the discoveries of Botta and Layard, we have presented to us, by means of an entirely distinct investigation, a clue to the meaning of the inscriptions with which the ancient Nineveh monuments are covered. The discovery has placed Major Rawlinson in the first rank of historical investigators, and the time and way in which the light has dawned upon us are so remarkable as to have the character of a providential appropriateness.

On the present occasion we have taken advantage of Mr. Vaux's excellent compilation to delineate in outline the steps by which these twin discoveries of almost unexampled interest have been effected. We shall have future opportunities of entering more fully into the details of the subject. For the present we dismiss it

with a heartfelt expression of pride and congratulation at the successes of our admirable fellow-countrymen, Layard and Rawlinson, and a warm commendation of Mr. Vaux's useful and instructive record of their achievements.

Diary and Correspondence of John Evelyn, F.R.S. author of the "Sylva,' to which is subjoined the Private Correspondence between King Charles I. and Sir Edward Nicholas, and between Sir Edward Hyde, afterwards Earl of Clarendon, and Sir Richard Browne. A new Edition, in four volumes, corrected, revised, and enlarged. Vols. I. and 11.The re-publication of John Evelyn's Diary, or Autobiographical Journal, calls upon us to reconsider one of the most delightful works in our language. When it was originally published in 1818 we were amongst the first to make the public familiar with its valuable details; and again, when it was republished in 1827, we recurred with pleasure to its ever interesting pages. After the lapse of threeand-twenty years a fourth edition* summons us to refresh the recollection of our readers, of a book which is an endless source of amusement and instruction. It is too well known for it to be necessary that we should again go over the long course which it embraces; but a work which can never be referred to without pleasure, nor without profit, must not be allowed to pass without comment.

John Evelyn's earliest recollection takes us back to the year 1624, when at four years old he was receiving his first instruction in the school held over the church porch of his native Wotton. Even then his young ears were conscious of stories touching the Spanish Match and the great Count Gondomar; and when six years later he was learning Latin from the French tutor who implanted in him an insurmountable dislike for the English

*The first edition was published in 1818, in 2 vols. 4to.; the second edition followed, in the same form, in 1819; the third edition was in 5 vols. 8vo. 1827-8. The quarto editions were very inaccurate. The octavo edition, with the exception of a part of the first volume, was carefully collated with the original manuscript by Mr. Upcott, who saw it through the press. With a view to a new edition, Mr. Upcott afterwards carefully re-collated the whole of the octavo edition. The present edition is printed from his re-collated copy. He at the same time selected many new letters from Evelyn's correspondence, which are intended to be included in future volumes of this edition.