palus, the last of the royal line of Ninus, after one vigorous but ineffectual attempt at resistance to the enemy, set fire to his palace, and destroyed himself, his treasures, and his companions. A statue was afterwards erected to his memory, which showed strikingly the opinion entertained of him by his subjects. The king was represented in the attitude of a dancer, and the inscription was "eat, drink, and be merry; everything else is nothing."

Next came the dynasty of the Medes, which in its turn was overthrown by the victorious Cyrus, the Persian king. From the capital of the Persian empire, Xerxes set out with his myriad army to conquer Greece, and he returned to it a fugitive and defeated monarch. At length, Babylon fell beneath the all conquering power of Alexander the Great; it afterwards formed, for some time, a distant and insignificant fragment of the vast Roman empire, then sank amid the mounds of buried ruins, sixty miles in circumference, which now exist in the vast plains watered by the Tigris.

Nineveh was the largest and richest city of the world, considerably exceeding in extent the vast metropolis of England. It was in form a parallelogram 18 miles in length, 114 miles in breadth, and its circumference was not less than sixty miles. When the prophet Jonah passed through the streets of the city, warning the people of its coming destruction, he described it as an exceeding great city of three days' journey." The whole of the city was sur rounded by walls 100 feet in height, and of such thickness that three chariots might drive abreast on them, and they were fortified with 1,500 towers of 200 feet in height. History tells how Semiramis employed two millions of men, collected from all parts of her empire, to build the mighty Babylon, that she surrounded it with sixty miles of wall 350 feet high, or double the height of that transept beneath which the Nubian shrine is placed, and eighty-seven feet thick, or fifteen feet wider than the central nave of the Crystal Palace. On each side of the building were twenty-five brazen gates, which were opened in the day-time, and always closed at night. It was through these gates that Sennacherib issued forth, and went up to besiege Jerusalem with an army of 185,000 men; the destruction of the whole of which in one night is so poetically described by Byron,—

"Like the leaves of the forest when summer is green,
That host with their banners at sunset were seen:
Like the leaves of the forest when autumn hath blown,
That host on the morrow lay withered and strewn."

The city was surrounded by the Euphrates, or canals in connection with it; and to provide against the danger of the overflow of the river, a vast artificial lake, forty miles square, rather more than the extent of the whole of London and its suburbs, was excavated to the depth of seventy-five feet. How can we speak

of the excavations and earthwork of our docks and railways, or even the grounds at Sydenham!-All the earthwork that has been removed in this country for docks and railways, could have been deposited in this Babylonian reservoir, and Penge Hill to boot, in order to have brought it to a level with the lowest swamp in Lambeth! The palaces of Babylon were worthy residences for those who could order the construction of such works. "The old palace on the east side of the river," near to the temple of Belus, was three miles and three quarters in extent, and the new one on the opposite side was just double its size or seven miles and a half in compass. Our Windsor Castle and Buckingham Palace would be but porter's lodges, or gate-keeper's houses; and the New Palace at Westminster but an insignificant portion of this vast pileperhaps an aviary for golden parrots and chattering pies, or a theatre where Sardanapalus revelled in a private performance. The famous hanging gardens were enclosed within the area of this larger palace; they were supported by massive arches covered with earth to such a depth as to admit of the largest trees taking root in them; and the Sir Joseph Paxton of that time devoted all his energies to laying out the various terraces and grounds with the most fanciful forms of flower-beds and pleasing walks; and engines and pumps forced the water up to cisterns on vast water-towers, where it was used to water and refresh the elevated gardens. The temples of this mighty city were in keeping with the colossal ideas of the Assyrian nation. The temple of Belus was a square, a furlong on each side, or half a mile in compass, and was constructed of eight towers rising one above another, gradually decreasing in size, the topmost tower reaching to a height considerably exceeding that of the loftiest pyramid in Egypt. The statue of the great god Belus was forty feet high, the gold of which it was formed was of the value of more than three million of pounds, and the whole of the treasures of the temple are stated to have exceeded twenty-one millions. This wonderful temple was plundered and destroyed by Xerxes on his return from his Grecian campaign; and Alexander, on his way back from his Indian conquests, set ten thousand men to work for more than three months in order to clear the building of the ruins and rubbish in which it was buried: his death, however, put an end to the proceedings long before they were completed.

Accounts have very recently reached this country of the discovery of a most beautiful palace at Nineveh, once belonging to the son of Esar-Haddon. The sculptures are infinitely superior in variety of subject, in artistic treatment, and skill and delicacy of execution, to everything that has been before found. The palace also is of great extent, containing perhaps five hundred sculptured slabs, and the marbles are generally in a good state of preservation. Colonel Rawlinson says, The new palace is by far the most magnificent thing yet discovered in Assyria. Each hall,

room, and passage, is devoted to a separate subject; and where the series is complete, and the sculpture is well preserved, as not unfrequently happens, the series are of extraordinary interest. In fact, the variety of subject, artistic grouping and treatment, high relief, richness of detail, and delicacy of execution, entitle the palace to be reckoned the chef-d'œuvre of Assyrian art. Some of the pavement slabs are most superb; and the animals, trees, and flowers-even the human figures-are much more natural and free from conventionalities, than in any of the earlier palaces. There are between two and three hundred sculptured slabs already uncovered, and not above half the palace is yet explored. Colossal bulls and lions there are none, but monsters, centaurs, hippogriffs, &c., as many as you please. At one of the entrances there are a pair of round ornamental pedestals, which certainly supported columns-they must have been formed, I suppose, of wood. On one slab there is a city with a double wall, and within, a temple, faced with a row of columns, supported on the backs of animals. On another there is a mound, on the top of which is a castle, and to give more extent to the upper platform, a causeway is run out from the top of the masonry, with sharp-pointed arches stretching down the side of the mound. One of the slabs representing the palace or temple, represents very minutely the exterior architecture. The second story is built with pillars, which have their bases on the backs of lions and human-headed bulls, with their heads turned like those found at Khorsabad. One of the best executed slabs represents a lion-hunt. In this scene the king is the principal huntsman, and he is in the act of striking a lance into a lion springing upon his chariot, whilst seven others, already pierced by many arrows, some of which are dead, and others dying, are most beautifully and naturally portrayed upon the slabs. On another slab they have represented a park with an open gate, through which is seen the king hunting lions, executed on a very minute scale, as if they intended it to appear far in the distance. The art displayed in the treatment of both men and animals in the bas-reliefs surpasses everything yet discovered in the ruins of Assyria."

The Assyrian court was restored, constructed, and arranged by Mr. Fergusson, under the general superintendence of Mr. Layard.

AGINA MARBLES.

Passing from the Assyrian court, the visitor will now cross the nave under the gallery at the north end of the building, where an interesting collection of rude and hard-looking statuettes arrest attention.

This group of figures, known as the Ægina marbles, are from the Temple of Jupiter Panhellenius, built on the beautiful island of Egina, at least six centuries before the Christian era-a period

considerably earlier than that in which the Parthenon was erected at Athens, the models of which have already been inspected. The larger of these groups consists of ten statuettes from the western pediment of the temple, representing the fight around the body of Patroclus. The friend of Achilles lies dead in the centre; upon the right are the Trojan heroes, Hector, Paris, and Æneas, and an unknown warrior; on the left of Patroclus are the Greeks, represented by Ajax, Teucer, Diomede, and one unknown. The second group is composed of the five statues from the eastern pediment of the temple, representing the fight of Hercules and Telamon against the Trojan king Laomedon. The originals are in the Glyphothekè, at Munich.

These interesting relics of ancient Greek art were discovered in 1811, by a party of English and German travellers, among whom was Mr. Cockerell, one of the most celebrated architects of the present day. They were found buried under the ruins of the temple, and accumulations of rubbish, nearly as they had fallen from their original places. Almost all the figures from the west front were recovered, while those which belonged to the eastern pediment were in a more ruinous and dilapidated condition. Thorwaldsen, the eminent sculptor, was engaged to repair and restore all the statues which were not so completely broken as to render reparation impossible. Entire restorations of this beautiful Doric temple of Jupiter, with imitations of the figures, have been made, and deposited in the British Museum, and form an important addition to the other specimens of Greek art in that grand national collection.

THE COLOSSAL NUBIAN SHRINE OF ABOU-SIMBOUL.

Walking on a few steps down the nave, contemplating meanwhile the grand perspective of the lofty arched nave, with its network of girders and cross-girders, and its background of light blue sky; or, perhaps, admiring the elegant form of the basin of water with its water-lilies and plants, or the mounds formed of roots of old trees stubbed up in the course of the earthworks necessary to the construction of the building and laying out of the ground, and now tastefully covered with a variety of creeping plants, we arrive at an avenue of twenty-four colossal sphynxes, which form an appropriate passage to the two giant figures which form a portion of the rocky front of the famous tomb of Abou-Simboul. These colossal figures are seventy-two feet in height as they are seated. On the original tomb, or shrine, there were four figures, two being seated on each side of the huge entrance into the rocky chamber where reposed the dust of the Nubian monarchs. These gigantic figures astonish and overwhelm the visitor as he reflects upon the immense labour which must have been expended in carving these monstrous forms out of solid rock, and thus exposing them in the

clear atmosphere of Nubia to the adoring gaze of the worshippers of Isis, at a distance of thirty miles from the rocky shrine. The strange combination of human and animal features in the figure known as the sphynx, is of frequent occurrence in both Greek and Egyptian mythology and art, but more frequently found in the case of the latter. The great sphynx at Jiseh, near the pyramids, is not less than 143 feet in length, and 62 feet in height, or nearly the same as that of the colossal seated human figures. The admirable author of "Eōthen" thus describes the appearance of the sphynx of Egypt, and the poetic sentiments to which its contemplation gave rise in his mind:-"And near the pyramids, more numerous and more awful than all else in the land of Egypt, there rests the lonely sphynx. Comely the creature is, but the comeliness is not of this world: the once worshipped beast is a deformity and a monster to this generation, and yet you can see that these lips, so thick and heavy, were fashioned according to some ancient mould of beauty-some mould of beauty now forgottenforgotten, because that Greece drew forth Cytherea from the flashing foam of the Ægean, and in her image created new forms of beauty, and made it a law among men that the short and proudly wreathed lip should stand for the sign and the main condition of loveliness through all generations to come! Yet there still lives on the race of those who were beautiful in the fashion of the elder world; and Christian girls, of Coptic blood, will look on you with sad, curious gaze, and kiss your charitable hand with the big pouting lips of the very sphynx. Laugh and mock if you will at the worship of stone idols, but mark ye this, ye breakers of images, that in one regard the stone idol bears awful semblance of Deityunchangefulness in the midst of change the same seeming will and intent for ever and ever inexorable! Upon ancient dynasties of Ethiopian and Egyptian kings upon Greek and Roman, upon Arab and Ottoman conquerors-upon Napoleon dreaming of an Eastern empire-upon battle and pestilence upon the ceaseless misery of the Egyptian race-upon keen-eyed travellers, Herodotus yesterday, and Warburton to-day-upon all, and more, this unworldly sphynx has watched, and watched like a Providence, with the same earnest eyes, and the same sad, tranquil mien. And we shall die, and Islam will wither away; and the Englishman, straining far over to hold his loved India, will plant firm foot on

and

the banks of the Nile, and sit on the seats of the faithful; still that sleepless rock will lie watching and earnest, the work of the new busy race, with those same sad eyes, and the same tranquil mien everlasting. You dare not mock at the sphynx."

Let us, however, press on; a new order of things demands attention, for the realms of Christian art lie as yet unexplored by the visitor, or unexplained by the guide. Leaving the avenue of the sphynxes, the visitor sees on the left-hand side of the nave a series of courts, profusely coloured and decorated: these are courts devoted to the illustration of Christian art.