Long and anxiously has the reading public been looking for Mr. Layard's
account of his further discoveries in Nineveh and Babylon. That account has
at length appeared in one large octavo volume, under the title of
_Discoveries in the Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon, with Travels in Armenia,
Kurdistan, and the Desert, being the result of a Second Expedition
undertaken for the Trustees of the British Museum, by_ Austen H. Layard,
M.P., and is enriched with maps, plans, and woodcut illustrations, to the
extent of some hundreds. And on examining it we find that the vast amount
of new light which Mr. Layard's discoveries in the wide and hitherto
untilled field of Assyrian antiquities had already thrown on Sacred
History, is increased to a great extent by those further researches, of
which the details are now given to the public. With his ready powers of
observation, and his talent for graphic description, Mr. Layard's book, as
a mere volume of travels over a country of such interest, would well repay
perusal: but when we find in addition, as we do in every page and line,
fresh and startling illustration of the truth of Holy Writ--when we have
put before us such pictures of what Nineveh and Babylon must have been, and
find, as we do, men distinguished in every branch of learning lending their
assistance to turn Mr. Layard's discoveries to the best account, we feel we
cannot be too loud in our praises of Mr. Layard's zeal, energy, and
judgment, or too grateful to Mr. Murray for giving us at once the results
which those qualities have enabled Mr. Layard to gain for us, in so cheap,
complete, yet fully embellished a form.
The blockade of Mainz was not a bad day for the already world-renowned
story of _Reynard the Fox_, since that led Göthe to dress the old fable up
again in his musical hexameters, and so give it new popularity. From
Göthe's version a very able and spirited English paraphrase is now in the
course of publication. We say paraphrase, because the author of _Reynard
the Fox, after the German version of Göthe, with illustrations by_ J. Wolf,
takes as his motto the very significant but appropriate description which
Göthe gave of his own work, "Zwischen Uebersetzung und Umarbeitung
schwebend." However, the version is a very pleasant one, and the
illustrations are characteristic and in good taste.
An _Antiquarian Photographic Club_, for the exchange among its members of
photographs of objects of antiquarian interest, on the principle of the
_Antiquarian Etching Club_, is in the course of formation.
BOOKS RECEIVED.--_The Family Shakspeare, in which nothing is added to the
original Text, but those words and expressions are omitted which cannot
with propriety be read in a Family, by_ T. Bowdler, Vol. V., containing
Troilus and Cressida, Coriolanus, Julius Cæsar, Antony and Cleopatra, and
Cymbeline.--The new volume of Bohn's _Standard Library_ contains the eighth
and concluding volume of the _History of the Christian Church_, as
published by Neander. The publisher holds out a prospect of a translation
of the posthumous volume compiled from Neander's Papers by Dr. Schneider,
and with it of a general index to the whole work.--_The Physical and
Metaphysical Works of Lord Bacon, including his Dignity and Advancement of
Learning, in Nine Books, and his Novum Organum, or Precepts for the
Interpretation of Nature_, by Joseph Devey, M.A., forms the new volume of
Bohn's _Scientific Library_.
* * * * *
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