[36]. The Oriental Translation Fund.
[37]. Comp. ‘Asshur builded Nineveh, and the city Rehoboth, and Calah.’—Gen. x, 11. Mr. Layard quotes this passage, in Nineveh and its Remains (vol. i, p. 4, edit. 1849), and seems to identify ‘Kalah Sherghat’ as retaining its ancient name.
[38]. Nor was there any petty or unworthy jealousy in the distinguished French explorer. ‘During the entire period of his excavations,’ writes Mr. Layard, ‘M. Botta regularly sent me, not only his [own] descriptions, but copies of the inscriptions, without exacting any promise as to the use I might make of them. That there are few who would have acted thus liberally, those who have been engaged in a search after Antiquities in the East will not be inclined to deny.’—Nineveh and its Remains, vol. i, p. 14.
[39]. It is a slight blemish in Mr. Layard’s otherwise admirable books that they are loose in the handling of dates. It is sometimes necessary to turn over hundreds of pages in order to be sure of the year in which a particular excavation was made, or in which an interesting incident occurred. Sometimes, again, there is an actual conflict of dates, e. g. Discoveries in the Ruins, &c. (1853), p. 3, ‘After my departure from Mósul in 1847,’ and again, p. 66, ‘On my return to Europe in 1847;’ but at p. 162, we read: ‘Having been carefully covered up with earth, previous to my departure in 1848, they [the lions] had been preserved,’ &c. I mention this simply because it is possible that error may thus, once or twice, have crept into the marginal dates given above, though pains has been taken about these.
[40]. The Berodach-Baladan of 2 Kings, xx, 12, who ‘sent letters and a present unto Hezekiah, when he had heard that Hezekiah had been sick.’
[41]. And in which not a few readers will be sure to feel all the more interest, because of its sacred associations, when they call to mind those first-century travels of certain famous travellers who, ‘after they had passed throughout Pisidia, came to Pamphylia, and ... when they had gone through Phrygia, ... and were come to Mysia, assayed to go into Bythinia, but the Spirit suffered them not;’—having work for them to do in another quarter.
[42]. I shall not, I trust, be suspected of a want of gratitude for the eminent and most praiseworthy efforts of Mr. Davis—one of the many Americans who have returned, with liberal profuseness, the reciprocal obligations which all Americans owe to Britain (for their ancestry, and also for the noble interchange of benefits between parent and offspring, prior to 1776; if for nought else), if I venture to remark that the above-written passage in the text has been inserted somewhat hesitatingly, as far as it concerns the date of the Carthaginian explorations. No index; no summary; no marginal dates; conflicting and obscure dates, when any dates appear anywhere; no introduction, which introduces anything; scarcely any divarication of personal knowledge and experiences, from borrowed knowledge and experiences; such are some of the difficulties which await the student of Carthage and her Remains. Yet the book is full of deep interest; its author is, none the less, a benefactor to Britain, and to the world.
[43]. These were given to the Museum by Lord Russell, as Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. Lord Russell was one of the earliest of the Foreign Secretaries who began a new epoch, in this department of public duty, by setting new official precedents of regard and forethought for the augmentation of the national collections.
[44]. Meaning Lord Shelburne. See, heretofore, pp. 431–433.
[45]. ‘A Handy-Book of the British Museum, for Every-day Readers.’ 1870 (Cassell and Co.).