investigation will supply him with still more ancient records than any he now possesses. The monuments of Nineveh, as far as they go, corroborate all extant history in describing the monarch as a thorough Eastern despot, "unchecked by popular opinion, and having complete power over the lives and property of his subjects; rather adored as a god than feared as a man, and yet himself claiming that authority and general obedience in virtue of his reverence for the national deities and the national religion." The dominion of the king, according to the inscriptions, extended to the central provinces of Asia Minor and Armenia northward; to the western provinces of Persia eastward; to the west as far as Lydia and Syria; and to the south to Babylonia and the northern part of Arabia. "The empire appears to have been at all times a kind of confederation formed by many tributary States, whose kings were so far independent that they were only bound to furnish troops to the supreme lord in time of war, and to pay him yearly a certain tribute." The Jewish tribes, it is now proved, held their dependent position upon the Assyrian king from a very early period; and it is curious to observe that, wherever an expedition against the kings of Israel is mentioned in the Assyrian inscriptions, it is invariably stated to have been undertaken on the ground that they had not paid their customary tribute.

At every step sacred history is illustrated, illuminated, and explained by the speaking stones of Nineveh; and in this regard alone the Assyrian discoveries have a significance beyond any revelation that has been made in modern times. Even the architecture of the

THE TEMPLE OF SOLOMON.

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sacred people may be rendered visible to the eye by comparing it with that of the Assyrian structures; and certainly not the least instructive result of all Mr. Layard's labours is the ingenious analogy drawn by Mr. Fergusson in his "Palaces of Nineveh and Persepolis Restored," between the Temple of Solomon and the palace of the Assyrian king.

It is with the utmost interest that we await the issue of further excavations. We sincerely trust that men and means may not be wanting in this country in order to enable our constituted authorities to proceed, at least side by side with France, in the disinterment of the most glorious monuments hitherto vouchsafed to the enterprising skill and curiosity of

man,

May 19, 1853.

LORD MANSFIELD.

WE are not surprised that a considerable portion of one of the two volumes comprising the "Lives of the Chief Justices" is devoted to the career of Chief Justice Mansfield. Lord Campbell has learned to take a broad and manly view of the profession which his own erudition adorns. In his temporary retirement he paid homage to literature; and literature, as is her wont, rewards her worshipper by extending his vision and emancipating his mind. A more intimate acquaintance with the transactions and passions of the past, a disinterested and unbiassed survey of the lives and triumphs of his illustrious predecessors, has prepared our present Chief Justice for his eminence by teaching him, above all things, that judicial fame does not arise from a dull though perfect knowledge of the technicalities of law, and that there is all the difference in the world between a splendid ambition and the grovelling prosecution of an ignoble trade.

It is certainly not extraordinary that the life of the great Earl of Mansfield has been contemplated by his biographer until a sense of humility has been engendered, and eloquent admiration for transcendent intelligence evoked. From amongst a host this luminary stands forth. Faultless he was not, as we shall presently see; but his failings, whatever they may have been, in no way obscured the lustre of a genius

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that gave sublimity to the most prosaic of pursuits, and, in the teeth of prejudice, rescued the profession of law against the toils of the narrow-minded and the opprobrium of ages. What Bacon proved to philosophy, Mansfield in his day became, in a measure, to his own cherished science; and, as Coke affected commiseration for the author of the Novum Organum, so the fettered slaves of forms and rules in later times pitied and reproached Lord Mansfield for his declared unconquerable preference for the spirit of justice to the unilluminated letter of the law.

Nature and education prepared William Murray for the very highest forensic distinction, and his career is chiefly remarkable for the certain, though gradual steps, by which he reached it. His success was the legitimate and logical result of the means sedulously taken to obtain it. Had William Murray failed to win his race, it would have been because he had dropped down dead on the course, or violent hands had forbidden his progress. The conditions of victory were secured at starting in his own person, let the competitors be whom they might. The spirit of the boy was as ambitious of worldly glory as the spirit of the man looked for undying fame; from first to last, from the beginning of the century until the close of it, the same application, the same aptitude, the same self-devotion, and the same clear, unruffled, penetrating judgment, were visible in Mansfield's useful and protracted life.

The younger son of a poor Scotch lord, whose family favoured the Stuart cause, William Murray quitted his school at Perth on the 15th of March, 1718, being then thirteen years of age, and started

on the back of a pony for the city of London. His destination was the house of an apothecary, who, emigrating from Perth, had settled in London, and was now commissioned to see the son of his former patron safely deposited at Westminster School, where it was hoped the young student would win, in due time, his Oxford scholarship. Upon the 8th of May, just two months after the journey was commenced, the pony completed his task, and the rider resolutely began his own. He soon distinguished himself by his classical attainments, and, according to Mr. Welsby, "his superiority was more manifest in the declamations than in any of the other exercises prescribed by the regulations of the school." In May, 1723, after a severe examination, William Murray took his place as first on the list of King's scholars who were to proceed to Christ Church.

At Oxford the student determined to go to the bar, and through the generosity of the first Lord Foley, who supplied him with funds, he was enabled to follow a profession for which, as he himself said, he felt "a calling." He had not been at Oxford a year before he became a member of the Hon. Society of Lincoln's-inn, although he did not begin to keep his terms there until he had taken his bachelor's degree. At college William Murray was as diligent as he had been at school, and, intent upon renown, he took care to make all study subservient to the one great object of his life. He read whatever had been written on the subject of oratory,-translated into English every oration of Cicero, and retranslated it into Latin, until every thought and expression of the illustrious example was familiar to