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tional instances) to that peaceful intercourse which tends to assimilate the arts of one country to those of another.

The monuments of Assyria scarcely carry us back to an age quite so remote as that to which the monuments of Egypt ascend—the great north-western palace of Nimroud not extending to an earlier period that that ranging between the date of Ninus, 1341 b.c. and that of the revolt of Arbaces, 821 b.c.

Unlike Egypt, Assyria seems to have advanced in both architecture and sculpture, instead of retrograded. The earlier monuments are neither so magnificent in conception nor so beautiful in execution as the later, which are comprised within a period of about 220 years, reaching to the destruction of Nineveh about the year 600 b.c. The palaces of Khorsabad and Kouyunjik exhibit to us the extraordinary features with which the publications of Mr Layard, and the remains brought by him to this country and deposited in the British Museum, together with the restoration of an Assyrian palace executed by Mr Fergusson in the Crystal Palace, but unfortunately destroyed in a calamitous fire, have made the English public familiar.

Some idea may be formed of the vast extent of the palace of Sennacherib at Kouyunjik—the grandest of all the buildings discovered on the site of Nineveh—from the fact that no less than seventy-one halls, chambers, and passages were explored, whose walls, almost without exception, were panelled with slabs of sculptured alabaster recording and illustrating the wars, the triumphs, and other great deeds of the Assyrian kings. Mr Layard tells us that nearly two miles of bas-reliefs, with twenty-seven portals formed by colossal winged-bulls and lion-sphinxes were uncovered. "It would be difficult," says Mr Layard, "to form any idea of the solemn appearance of the vast underground galleries in which the explorations were carried on. The colossal human-headed monsters scarcely emerging from the dim light, the long