the ingenuity with which they have been Sheffield ; and more especially for the adapted to the purposes of the hymnolo- Wesleyans, to which body he always had gist:

a warm attachment, he was ever ready to "Spirit, leave thy house of clay;

meet applications for the service of his Lingering dust, resign thy breath : muse. Our article has already reached Spirit, cast thy chains away;

the limits assigned to it, and we may not Dust, be thou dissolved in death.' Thus thy guardian angel spake,

dwell upon them at further length. We As he watch'd thy dying bed ;

cannot conclude, however, without briefly As the bands of life he brake,

adverting to one or two of his hymns for And the ransom'd captive fled.

family or private devotion. They are “ * Prisoner, long detain'd below; superior, we think, to anything of the kind

Prisoner, now with freedom blest; in the English language. The first we Welcome from a world of woe,

notice has a place, with the omission of Welcome to a land of rest!' Thus thy guardian angel sang,

four stanzas, as No. 619 in the Methodist As he bore thy soul on high;

Collection. It is a social hymn for the While with hallelujahs rang

evening of the Lord's day, ending with the All the region of the sky.

expressive petition :“ Ye that mourn a father's loss, Ye that weep a friend no more,

“Yet one prayer more; and be it one

In which both heaven and earth accord: Call to mind the Christian cross

Fulfill thy promise to thy Son;
Which your Friend, your Father bore.

Let all that breathe call Jesus, Lord !" Grief, and penury, and pain,

Still attended on his way;
And oppression's scourge and chain,

It was our privilege, some time ago, to
More unmerciful than they.

visit one of God's suffering ones, who had

been for a long time deprived, by sickness, “Yet while traveling in distress

Mont('T was the eldest curse of sin)

of the public means of grace. Through the world's waste wilderness gomery's poem, entitled A Sabbath in the He had paradise within.

Sick Chamber, was the solace of many a And along that vale of tears

solitary hour; and the consolation and Which his humble footsteps trod, Still a shining path appears

even joyousness imparted by its repeated Where the wanderer walk'd with God- | perusal would have amply repaid the “ Till his Master, from above,

author, could he have been present, for all When the promised hour was come,

his labor of love in the composition of Sent the chariot of his love

similar strains. The verses alluded to To convey the wanderer home.

are found in the Methodist Episcopal Saw ye not the wheels of fire,

Hymn Book, (No. 665,) and, as yet, in no And the steeds that cleft the wind ? Saw ye not his soul aspire

other collection with which we are acWhen his mantle dropp'd behind ? quainted. Not long after our last visit to “Ye who caught it as it fell,

that sick chamber, the poet and the Bind that mantle round your breast;

patient sufferer, to whom we refer, hailed So in you his meekness dwell,

each other in the better land with “ songs So in you his spirit rest!

of everlasting joy." Yet rejoicing in his lot

Still shall memory love to weep On the venerable spot

Young GenerALS.-Alexander the Great Where his dear cold relics sleep.

died at the age of thirty-two. Hannibal "Grave! the guardian of the dust, gained the battle of Cannæ at about the Grave! the treasury of the skies,

same age. Scipio fought at Zama when Every atom of thy trust Rests in hope again to rise.

not much over thirty. Julius Cæsar had Hark! the judgment trumpet calls conquered Gaul when he was forty-five.

"Soul, rebuild thy house of clay: Germanicus was poisoned in his thirtyIMMORTALITY thy walls,

At the battle of Plassey, And ETERNITY thy day!'”

Clive's age was not so advanced as that. In that most difficult poetic task, the Napoleon gained his mighty victory at preparation of hymns for children, Mont- Austerlitz when he had scarcely comgomery was frequently very successful. pleted his seventh lustrum ; and at the For the children of his own Church, the time Wellington finished his campaigns on Moravian; for the anniversaries of Sunday the plains of Waterloo he was only fortyschools of the different denominations in | six years of age.

Vol. VII.-16

fourth year.

STORY OF ANCIENT NINEVEH.

and though it seems to have been fertile,

must have been dependent for that cirMHE foundation of the city of Nineveh, cumstance upon the art and toil of hus

by one to whom Moses gives the name bandry. In addition to the rains which of Asshur, and who seems from the dis- watered the soil, it is probable that from interred sculptures to have been after an early period the fields were irrigated by ward worshiped as a god, is a fact clearly artificial canals. decided; but the period of that event The earliest king with whom Rawlinson cannot be ascertained, and conjecture is makes us acquainted through the inscripvain. However, long before the his- tions he has explained, reigned, according toric age which our enterprising travel to him, about 1250 B. C., and took his ers have disclosed to us, there the city name from Derceto, whom he identifies as stood upon the banks of the Tigris, by the Semiramis, a personage evidently transdelta which the Zab, flowing into the river, formed by the Ninevites into a goddess, forms at its junction. The country around, which so far accords with the tradition of though undulating, was anything but hilly, | Ctesias. Another king, named Divanu

bara, next gleams out of the past, reflected from many a slab and brick bearing his name, but nothing more -indicating, however, that he must have been a famous

builder. Foll

Two other names occur afterward, not

satisfactorily deciDAP phered yet ; — but

before the end of the eleventh century, B. C., there are evidences of a monarch, whom Rawlinson considers to have been the first to carry the Assyrian arms into foreign countries.

“ His exploits are recorded on a slab which was found at Nimroud, a relic of some ancient palace; and they are of value

in defining the limits JAVENY.SC

of the Assyrian empire at

that early period. The king boasts that he had extended his sway from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean; but it is evident from his lists of conquests, that neither Syria to the west, nor Asia Minor to the north-west, nor Media to the east, had been yet visited by the armies of Nineveh. In a later age indeed, when Sardanapalus led his troops beyond the Taurus, he expressly says that the king in question had not penetrated so remote a quarter. In the eleventh century B. C., the empire of Nineveh comprised Mesopotamia, Syria, and Babylonia; and incursions seem to have

been then first made into Armenia, and the to picture the king, Sardanapalus, going mountainous countries about the sources of forth from the gate of his palace guarded the Tigris and Euphrates."

by winged lions—the symbol of Assyrian The historical epoch of Assyria fairly power employed by Daniel. He appears begins with the tenth century, and thence in the midst of his eunuchs, officers, serforth we trace a nearly uninterrupted series vants, and soldiers ; " the captains and of sovereigns down to the tragical fall of rulers, all of them desirable young men ; the city in 606. We find that at the time horsemen, riding upon horses.” We see when Solomon in all his glory dwelt in his him in his battle chariot, gorgeously arpalace in Zion, Adrammelech the First rayed, drawn by four horses. They sweep wielded his scepter over Nineveh and its along in proud martial array. They cross extensive dominions. But the kings of rivers ; the chariots going over in boats, this epoch seem to have been warriors ra

and the men swimming on bladders. ther than builders, since no monuments of They besiege cities; the monarch stands their magnificence have been found. A up in his chariot, with drawn bow, before great and illustrious king reigned in the the turreted walls; darts fly, shields are tenth century, with whose tastes and ex- battered, men fall; and then, from the ploits we have become familiar by means

scenes of carnage, we behold the triumphal of the remains of the north-west palace of procession return laden with spoil. Nimroud, of which he was the builder. While we see all this warlike array, inIt is a curious fact, which we gather from dicative of the spirit of Assyrian civilization the cuneiform inscriptions, that this palace at the time, and which of itself is no suffiwas founded upon the ruins of a former cient indication of advancement in art as it one; and we are further informed by the regarded other things—we have peeps also same graven records, that the inhabitants into peaceful Assyrian life in the sculptures of the countries over whom he ruled sent that King Sardanapalus has left us. We gold, silver, copper, and iron for the build

see him walking out under an umbrella ing of the edifice. Concerning the ren held over him by his eunuch. He stands dering of his name, there is a difference of worshiping before a symbolic tree; the opinion. Dr. Hincks renders it Assarac- practice of divination is maintained ; huntbal, and Colonel Rawlinson, Sardanapalus.

ers go out and return from the chase ;

the As if to preserve his fame in the event of mysteries of the kitchen are revealed, and his palace being defaced, the annals of his the primitive cooks may be seen busy at reign were engraved on slabs on the side their culinary art. We can enter also the facing the wall, as well as on the outer very stables of the monarch, where we surface. As many as three hundred and find grooms currying their horses, and twenty-five lines of writing remain, in other animals eating or drinking out of which we find an account of this monarch's troughs. We can here only add, what a warlike expeditions detailed in a succinct feeling of reality is given to that old northand characteristic style :

west palace, where Sardanapalus chron“On the twenty-second day of the month Iicled his deeds and illustrated his civildeparted from Calah, (Nimroud ;) I crossed the ization, by a little incident mentioned by Tigris; on the banks of it I received much Layard. He says: tribute; I occupied the banks of the Khabour. I halted at the city of Sadikanni."

“Standing one day, on a distant part of the

mound, I smelt the sweet smell of burning cedar. Having crossed the Euphrates, he says: The Arab workmen excavating in the small

“On the banks of the Orontes, I occupied the temple had dug out a beam, and the weather country. By the sea-shore I encamped." While being cold, had at once made a fire to warm I was at Ariboua, the cities of Lukuta I took; themselves. The wood was cedar, probably one I slew many of their men; I overthrew and of the very beams mentioned in the inscription burned their cities; their fighting men I laid as having been brought from the forests of hold of; on stakes over their city I impaled Lebanon by the king who built the edifice.” them. On the great sea I put my servants; I

This Sardanapalus the First, who must sacrificed to the

gods. I went to the forest and cut them down, and made beams of the wood not be confounded with the hero of so for Ishtar, mistress of the city of Nineveh, my many modern epics and tragedies, was protectress.”

succeeded by his son, whose name RawlinThese curt details receive pictorial il son takes to be Divanubara. He was the lustrations from the cotemporary architec- builder of the central palace of Nimroud, ture and sculptures; so that we'are enabled | and on the famous black obelisk brought

from the ruins of his palace, and now year,

and his continued wars and ovations placed in the British Museum, we find in- show at that period of his life no decline scriptions recording the victories of his of vigor, he probably filled the throne of reign, and sculptures illustrative of the Assyria till about 860 B.C. Shamas Adar spoils and tribute which were the fruit of and Adrammelech II. were the immediate those victories. He was a very great descendants of Divanubara. Only the warrior, and seems to have kept his armies name of the former is known, with the cirin a state of efficiency and activity, from cumstance of his adopting the family title the beginning to the end of his reign, Derceto; but the latter is ascertained to for the records state that he led them have built palaces after the manner of his across the Euphrates no less than twenty- father, both at Calah and Nineveh. three times. A multitude of places are The next Assyrian king added to the named where he subdued revolts, or palace in the center of the mound of Nimbrought the people into subjection; and it roud, and on a bass-relief of his reign we is remarkable that he seems to have been see him, with a line of war chariots, reparticularly zealous in promoting his own ceiving tribute from Menahem, King of religion, for he says: “I abode in the Israel. Only fragments of the annals of country about the rivers which form the this monarch remain, but his first campaign Euphrates, and there I set up altars to the appears to have been in Chaldea, and he is supreme gods, and left priests in the land represented as carrying his arms into the to superintend the worship.” Upon the remotest parts of Armenia, and across the obelisk the king appears twice, followed Euphrates into Syria, as far as Tyre and by his train, with a prisoner at his feet, Sidon. Among the list of conquered towns and his vizier and eunuchs bringing him and tribes are Harran and Ur, names so animals and other tribute. The forms of interesting to us from their association the animals are of historical importance, with the early history of the great Jewish for they are all clearly oriental, thus progenitor. This monarch is considered showing his extensive conquests in the by Layard to have been either the imeast. There are the elephant, the rhinoc-mediate predecessor of Pul, Pul himself, eros, the lion, and the monkey, as well as or Tiglath Pileser, the name on the pavetusks, metal, and rare wood, borne in the ment slab not having been deciphered. hands of the tributaries. From the nature Colonel Rawlinson considers it was Pul of the bass-relief, observes Dr. Layard, it himself; and, moreover, conjectures that is natural to conjecture that the monument he took the name of Sardanapulus—that was erected to commemorate the conquest the first Assyrian dynasty ended with him of India, or of some country far to the —and that the catastrophe described by east of Assyria and on the confines of the Ctesias refers to the revolt of an officer of Indian peninsula. There are also double- the court who captured Nineveh, and drove humped or Bactrian camels, thus proving out the old family, B. C. 747—this memorthat by that time, at least, Bactria was able epoch being accordingly adopted by under the Assyrian power; so that, whe- the Babylonians as the basis of their astrother first conquered by Semiramis or not, nomical canon. This obscure and conthe story of Ctesias, about the subjugation troverted point, however, subsequent inof that eastern country, was not all a vestigations may serve to elucidate and dream. Divanubara is ascertained to decide. have been a cotemporary of Benhadad and The next king was Sargon, the names Hazael, from the obelisk recording ex of whose father and grandfather have been peditions against those very monarchs. discovered on a tablet at Kouyunjik, though “Jehu, the son of Omri,” is also expressly they do not appear to have been either of named as one of his subject kings; and them kings. Sargon was the builder of on the sculpture are represented figures, the great Khorsabad palace, in whose ruins which, from their physiognomy, short M. Botta has made so many valuable disbeard, and long robes, look like Jews. coveries, and where some striking accounts Divanubara dwelt indifferently at Nineveh of his reign have been met with. It apand at Calah, and the latter city he greatly pears by the alabaster chronicles that he embellished. The duration of his reign extended his conquests to the Isles of the cannot be exactly fixed; but as his annals Mediterranean, and set up a monument of on the obelisk extend to his thirty-second his victory in Cyprus. Babylonia, Su

1

siana, Armenia, and Media, were the The Old Testament, too, contains copious
scenes of his warfare, and even the kings allusions to his wars in Judea. And now,
of Egypt apparently rendered him tribute. in addition to these materials of history,
The palace of Khorsabad has been so well we have large inscriptions, narrating the
examined, and so fully explained, that we events of his reign, upon two clay cylin-
seem as if we could ascend the steps of ders, as well as on a pair of winged bulls.
the broad and lofty terrace that leads to Very soon after his accession, he began
the portal, where we are confronted by the to build the sumptuous palace at Kou-
four great winged bulls, two on each side yunjik, with which, restored in its original
--with their majestic impassive human magnificence, the sketch of Mr. Fergus-
faces turned toward us as if calmly watch- son has made us familiar. * It stands be-
ing our approach. Passing these huge fore us, with its immense terrace and far-
guardians, we enter the gates, wander spreading steps, an oriental pile of sur-
from gallery to chamber, and chamber to passing splendor: sculptured slabs, and
gallery, in the gorgeous edifice once oc- bulls, forming the basement; while above
cupied by the great King Sargon, whom are rows of columns, surmounted by other
we see yonder represented on a wall, in stories. Ten colossal bulls, and six human
royal attire, with a long staff in his hand, figures of gigantic size, actually remain ;
and attended by the officers of his court. and the sculptured walls forming the façade
There, too, is the god Nisroch ; and Ilus, of the palace, have been traced by Layard
a winged divinity; another deity also ap- to. the extent of one hundred and eighty
pearing with an eagle head; while yonder feet. He mentions that the bass-reliefs of
is a priest, holding three pomegranates. Kouyunjik differ from those of the older
The symbolic tree is likewise everywhere palaces of Nimroud, in the general treat-
conspicuous. In other compartments of ment of the subjects chosen for illustration,
the pictorial sculptures we see prepara- in the costume of the time, in the appear-
tions made for warlike expeditions. Logs ance of the nations warred against, and in
of wood are being hauled on shore for con- the character of the inscriptions, orna-
structing a port, or building a road. Then ments, and other details ; the whole mark-
we have representations of Assyrian ships ing a new era in the artistic culture and
-the very ships most likely that were civilization of Nineveh. We may add
employed for the transport of Sargon's that a number of small articles, illustrative
troops. There, too, are galleys with oars, of the domestic usages, appliances, and
the lofty prow rising up in the form of a personal decorations of the period, have
horse's head. Sieges are depicted, and been found at the mounds of Kouyunjik-
we are in the midst of towers and battering such as pieces of pottery, stone utensils,
rams, the former such as Sargon attacked, glass vases of great beauty, marble dishes,
and the latter such as he used in the enter- terra-cotta vessels, and molds for gold and
prises which his annals record. In other silver ear-rings.
divisions of this panorama of Assyrian It is very remarkable that monuments
life and usages, men are seen in the act of illustrative of the building of the palace
being hewn to pieces, or flayed alive, or exist, and we positively can see the As-
deprived of their eyesight, or with hooks syrians hy scores and hundreds busily en-
fastened in their mouths — pictures, no gaged with levers and ropes dragging the
doubt, of the treatment which captives winged bulls along to their places in the
received at the hands of Sargon. Next, structure, just as men at the present day
Sargon himself is seen, with his sons, set to work for the accomplishment of
amusing himself in the forest shooting at similar objects. The inscriptions relative
targets or hunting the lion. Then we to the warlike proceedings of Sennacherib
come to a feast, where the guests are are very copious. From them we learn
seated on stools at a table, with wine-cups that in the first year of his reign he de-
in their hands, seemingly drinking a health, feated Merodach Baladan, King of Babylon
perhaps that of Sargon.

-a name mentioned in the Old Testament
Sennacherib succeeded his father Sar-
gon. This monarch is distinctly mention- . A beautifully engraved copy of Mr. Fergus-
ed by Herodotus.
Eusebius also pre-

son's water-color drawing appears, as is wellserves a fragment of Polyhistor, containing from which the sectional view that adorns our

known, in Dr. Layard's recent work on Nineveh, an account of his campaign in Babylonia. / front page is taken.