When the misty light of day changed into the star-lit beauty of a northern night, a clear sound pierced the silence of the hall. It was the Christian vesper-hymn, led by a fresh young voice, through whose melody trembled a tone of almost angelic gladness-the voice of Hermolin. Svenska, aroused from her trance, sprang madly on her feet.

66

Hermolin asked nought, said nought-but she folded her arms round his neck; she knelt beside him, and drew his head to her bosom, as a mother would a beloved and repentant child. Then she whispered softly, "Olof, my Olof, come!" and led him away, his hand still clinging for safety and guidance to that faithful one of hers; and his eyes never daring to turn away from that face, which looked on him like an angel's from out of Olof, Olof," she cried, "the curse of Odin heaven, full of love so holy, so complete, that par-will fall; they will beguile thy soul, and I shall don itself had no place there. never see thee after death in the blessed dwellings of the Eser. Is there no help-no atonement ? Ah!" she continued, and her voice suddenly rose from the shrillness of despair to the full tone of joy-"I see it now. Odin thy will is clear: mine ear heard truly-mine eye saw plain. The sacrifice-it shall be offered still, and Odin's wrath be turned away. To the mountain, to the mountain, to the mountain !-son of Hialmar, son of Hialmar! I will yet await thee in the Valhalla of thy fathers."

Svenska stood beholding them, and still and fixed as stone, until Olof's form passed from her sight; then she fell to the earth without a cry or sound.

Ulva's breast was soon her pillow-Ulva, who haunted her steps like a shadow. No mother's fondness could have poured out more passionate words over the insensible form; but when the shadow of seeming death left the beautiful face, her manner became again that of distant and reverent tenderness.

"Priestess of the Nornir, awake!" she said. "Let the curse of Odin fall: we will go far hence into the wild mountains, and leave the race of Hialmar to perish. The vow was vain; but Nornir were not wholly pitiless. No shame has fallen upon thee, pure Daughter of the Snows!"

She darted from the hall, and bounded away with the speed of the wind. Night and day, night and day, far up in the mountains, did Ulva follow that flying form, until at times she thought it was only the spirit of the priestess that still flitted on before her sight. At last she came to a wild ravine, in which lay a frozen sea of snow; Svenska heard not-regarded not. Drawing on its verge stood that white shadow, with the herself away from all support, the young priestess outstretched arms, and the amber-floating hair. stood erect. She spoke not to Ulva, but uttering

her thoughts aloud

As Ulva looked, there grew on the stillness a sound like the roaring of the sea; and a mighty "Dread Nornir! is this your will? Ye de- snow-billow, loosened from its mountain-cave, came ceived me-nay, but I beguiled myself. How heaving on nearer, nearer it drew, and the pale could evil work out good? Odin scorns the un-shape was there still; it passed, and the Daughter holy offering; the sinful vow brings its own pun- of the Snows slept beneath them. ishment. Olof, Olof! whom I came to betray, I love thee, as my own soul I love thee, and in vain."

It was no more the priestess, but a desolate, despairing woman who lay there on the cold ground, and moaned in uncontrollable anguish. Ulva, stung to the heart, gazed on her without a word. The day of requital had come at last.

Songs, Madrigals, and Sonnets; a Gathering of some of the most pleasant Flowers of Old English Poetry. Set in Borders of Colored Ornaments and Vignettes.

The Daughter of the Snows!-whence, then, that shriek of mother's agony, the last that ever parted Ulva's lips-" My child, my child!" Let Death, the great veiler of mysteries, keep until eternity one dread secret more!

D. M. M. [Having read the foregoing, see Longfellow's ballad"The Skeleton in Armor."-LIV. AGE.]

COUNT D'ORSAY'S PICTURE OF OUR SAVIOUR.— A picture of Christ by Count d'Orsay! And truly, as pictures go, the gay count has produced a work that might take its place among some of the least A SMALL pocket volume, containing some sixty discreditable to our Royal Academy. It has been short lyrical poems, by various English writers, painted perhaps not without an eye to the mirror; old and modern, from the Earl of Surrey to Cole- the maxim that the artist appears in his work is at ridge. Each page is enclosed in a linear border, least as true as usual. Faults might be foundand on one side ornamented with a grotesque de- but they are not peculiar to the count; and he pays sign, after the manner of the grotesques in the Vat- us the compliment of adopting the faults of the ican. The designs are printed in colors from wooden English school rather than the French-the abblocks. The uniformity in size, a certain smallness, stracted expression, the feeble drawing, and the and the whiteness of the paper, give an air of pov-heavy coloring. But there is some solemnity in erty and monotony to the ornamental part of the this new and unforeseen aspect of Count d'Orsay, book; though it cannot be denied that some of the and much pattern beauty. Mr. Richard Lane is designs are pleasing. Altogether, the volume is making a lithograph of the painting; which he has an agreeable pocket companion.-Spectator. copied with his usual skill.-Spectator.

From the Quarterly Review.

By AUSTEN HENRY 2 vols. London, 1848.

which people the districts to the west and northNineveh and its Remains. west of the Tigris. But our impatience rapidly LAYARD, Esq., D. C. L. disappeared in such stirring and amusing comWe opened Mr. Layard's volumes, eager to panionship. We found in Mr. Layard not merely resume our researches into the antiquities of those an industrious and persevering discoverer in this almost pre-historic cities, Nineveh and her vassals, new field of antiquities, but an eastern traveller, which seem to have surrounded her on nearly every distinguished, we may say, beyond almost all others, side; to assist in the disinterment of the palaces of by the freshness, vigor, and simplicity of his narthe mythic Nimrod, Ninus, and Semiramis, which rative; by an extraordinary familiarity with the had perished from the face of the earth before the habits and manners of these wild tribes, which days of the later Hebrew prophets, and which, might seem almost intuitive, but is, we soon perafter a slumber of between 2000 and 3000 years, ceive, the result of long and intimate acquaintance, are for the first time brought again to light in the and perfect command of the language. No one nineteenth century. Our interest had been deep-has shown in an equal degree the power of adaptened by the sight of the few specimens of Mr. ing himself at once and completely, without surLayard's treasures which had then been placed rendering the acknowledged superiority of the in the British Museum; still more by the Khor-Frank, to the ordinary life of the Asiatic. Mr. sabad sculptures sent to Paris by Monsieur Botta. Layard, without effort, teaches us more, and in a Till within the last two months only the smaller more light and picturesque manner, even than bas-reliefs from Nimroud had reached England. D'Arvieux; he seems as trustworthy, though far Since that time a second portion has arrived, in- more lively and dramatic than Burckhardt. It is cluding the black marble obelisk. These articles, hardly too much to say that the history of the by the negligence or unwarrantable curiosity (we excavations and revelations, of his management of are unwilling to use stronger terms) of persons the Turkish rulers, of the wild chiefs whom the at Bombay, have suffered considerable damage, intelligence of his strange proceedings brought though by no means to the extent represented in around him, of the laboring Arabs and Chaldeans the public journals. Some of the smaller ones, whom he employed in his works, and the removal particularly those of glass, having been carelessly of the sculptures, with their embarkation on the repacked, were found broken to atoms; some, Tigris, is as interesting as the discoveries them"including the most valuable specimens," (these selves; while during the necessary suspension of are Mr. Layard's words,) were missing-it is to be his toil among the ruins, we are content to follow hoped not purloined by some over-tempted col- him into the villages of the Mohammedans, Neslector. Meantime the larger and more massive torian Christians, and Devil-worshippers, as if these pieces are still reposing on the mud-beach of Bas- were the sole or primary objects of his travels. sora. We trust that, even in these economic days, means will be found to transport them immediately to England, with positive orders to treat them with greater respect at Bombay. These (the Englishman has gained this peculiar power of huge lion and bull) we expect to turn out by far the most remarkable and characteristic specimens of Assyrian art. We judge by those at Paris, where there are some, especially one colossal figure, which, though temporarily stowed away in a small room on the ground-floor in the Louvre, impressed us with a strange gigantic majesty, a daringness of conception, which was in no way debased by the barbaric rudeness of the execution, and on the other hand enhanced by its singular symbolic attributes. It is that kind of statue which it takes away one's breath to gaze on.

Mr. Layard must excuse us if we acknowledge that he has irresistibly awakened our curiosity as to his own early history. How is it that a young

ruling and wielding for his own purposes the intractable Asiatic mind; how has he learned to be firm and resolute, yielding and conciliatory, always at the right time; to be liberal where he should be, and to withhold his bounty when demanded by a powerful marauder under the civil name of a gift; to resist the temptation of courting mistimed or misplaced popularity, yet to attach to himself all whose attachment could be valuable or useful; to parry deceit by courteous phrases, to out-hyperbolize oriental flattery-without any of the meanness of falsehood; to show that he fully understood these trickeries of oriental adulationwithout giving offence; quietly to maintain and to enforce respect for European, for English truth, honesty, and justice; to be the friend of the oppressed, without being the declared enemy of the

We found, therefore, not without some slight feeling of disappointment, or rather of impatience, that although we were speedily to commence our operations in disinterring these mysterious palaces, we were to be interrupted by the negotiations, and intrigues, and difficulties, which embarrassed all opressor? All this implies a large experience, as Mr. Layard's proceedings; and then, before much well as a happy aptitude for assuming foreign had been accomplished, carried away to accompany habits-long usage as well as intuitive sagacity. Mr. Layard in excursions in the neighborhood, and indeed to some distance from the scene of his labors; we were to wander among the wild tribes of various manners, and still more various creeds,

This work is now in press by Mr. G. P. Putnam, New York, and is very nearly ready for publication.

We are inclined therefore to think that if Mr. Layard had chosen to begin the history of his adventures some time before the first notion of making researches on the Assyrian plains had dawned upon his mind, (in 1839-40,) at all events before he commenced his actual operations

Were the traveller to cross the Euphrates to seek for such ruins in Mesopotamia and Chaldæa as he had left behind him in Asia Minor or Syria, his search would be vain. The graceful column rising above the thick foliage of the myrtle, the ilex, and the oleander; the gradines of the amphitheatre covering the gentle slope, and overlooking the dark blue waters of a lake-like bay; the richlyuriant herbage; are replaced by the stern shapeless carved cornice or capital half-hidden by the luxmound rising like a hill from the scorched plain, the fragments of pottery, and the stupendous mass of brickwork occasionally laid bare by the winterrains. He has left the land where nature is still lovely, where, in his mind's eye, he can rebuild the temple or the theatre, half doubting whether they would have made a more grateful impression upon the senses than the ruin before him. He is now at

in 1845, he might have given us some features of emotions kindled by the strong contrast between Asiatic life in other quarters, not less curious, the aspect of Grecian ruins and that of the shapeoriginal, and instructive, than those which trans-less sepulchres of the eastern cities, are described pire in the course of his present proceedings. His in the following impressive passage :— papers on the sites of certain ancient cities, in the Journal of the Geographical Society, show that he has travelled far and seen much beyond the course of the Tigris; and passages in the present work occasionally betray that the wandering tribes now introduced to our knowledge are not the first with whom Mr. Layard has lived on intimate terms, with whom he has thrown off all but the open and honorable character of the Frank, and kept up that acknowledged intellectual superiority, which, when not insolently or arbitrarily proclaimed, is sure to meet with its proper homage. We read, for instance, (p. 89,) after the description of a large tribe breaking up when migrating to new pastures: -"The scene caused in me feelings of melancholy, for it recalled many hours, perhaps unprofitably, though certainly happily spent; and many a loss to give any form to the rude heaps upon friends, some who now sighed in captivity for the which he is gazing. Those of whose works they joyous freedom which those wandering hordes en-are the remains, unlike the Roman and the Greek, joyed; others who had perished in its defence." In another place (p. 168) we find old habits, either of throwing the jerid, or of mingling in more serious frays, "making him forget his dignity, and join in this mimic war with his own attendants and some Kurdish horsemen." We notice these things as explaining, as well as guaranteeing, the truth, and so justifying our perfect reliance on the account of the mastery which Mr. Layard acquired over the Arab mind. These hours, if our readers are disposed to appreciate as highly as we do the value of his Assyrian discoveries, were not spent unprofitably, because, by the experience which they gave, by the skill thus acquired, Mr. Layard has been able to achieve what few Europeans tion of Mr. Layard. But he must have continued under the same circumstances could have achieved to brood over the vain yearnings of his antiquarian -to persuade these unruly children of the desert ambition, and to suppress his baffled curiosity, had to labor hard and with the utmost cheerfulness in it not happened that the English ambassador at his and in our service, and all for their own good. Constantinople observed and apprehended the enHe made them feel at once that they were energetic character and abilities of his young coungaged in the service of an employer, whose object tryman, and, entirely at his own hazard, placed was not to wring the utmost toil out of their weary funds at his disposal which would enable him at frames, and then wrest away the price of their least to carry on to some extent these tempting labors that it was his purpose, besides the fair researches. Mr. Layard gratefully and properly payment of their wages, to promote in every man- recalls to the remembrance of the country, the ner their happiness and improvement. great debt of gratitude which it owes to that accomplished minister, for proceeding in many instances far beyond the bounds of his commission-for being ever ready to risk his private resources, in order to secure for England such treasures as the marbles of Halicarnassus-and now

have left no visible traces of their civilization, or of their arts; their influence has long since passed away. The more he conjectures the more vague of the ruin he is contemplating; desolation meets the results appear. The scene around is worthy desolation; a feeling of awe succeeds to wonder; for there is nothing to relieve the mind, to lead to hope, or to tell of what has gone by. These huge mounds of Assyria made a deeper impression upon me, gave rise to more serious thought and more earnest reflection, than the temples of Balbec or the theatres of Ionia.-Vol. i., pp. 6, 7.

The success of M. Botta in his researches at Khorsabad, detailed in the 158th number of our journal, roused still further the generous emula

We must, however, wait patiently for whatever Mr. Layard may by and by be encouraged to give us of the details of his own earlier life in the east, content, meantime, with taking him up at the period to which these volumes distinctly refer. A former journey into the regions about the Ti-the remains of a city which had perished perhaps gris had awakened in his mind the strongest desire to make researches among the vast and mysterious mounds, those barrows it might seem of great cities, which rose in so many quarters, and which appeared not to have been violated by the scrutinizing hand of man for centuries beyond centuries. He had already surveyed the remains of more modern nations, on whom nevertheless we are accustomed to look as of remote antiquity. The

long before Halicarnassus was in being. The whole affair attests strongly the generosity, influence, and prudence of Sir Stratford Canning-and shows how well the British court is represented at the Ottoman Porte.

Thus unexpectedly furnished with funds, but, through the jealousy of certain parties, whose proceedings he contrasts with the enlightened and liberal spirit of M. Botta, obliged to act with

great caution and secrecy, Mr. Layard lost no as we approached this formidable cataract, over time in setting forth on his coveted mission. He which we were carried with some violence. Once arrived on the banks of the Tigris in October, safely through the danger, my companion explained 1845. We do not propose to follow him in every the river was caused by a great dam which had to me that this unusual change in the quiet face of step of his progress. Our design is to notice been built by Nimrod, and that in the autumn, bebriefly the difficulties which he had to encounter, fore the winter rains, the huge stones of which it and the opponents with whom he had to deal, to was constructed, squared, and united by cramps of set him fairly to work, and then follow him for a iron, were frequently visible above the surface of time as the eastern traveller, rather than as the the stream. It was, in fact, one of those monu. discoverer of ancient Nineveh; and in the later ments of a great people, to be found in all the rivportion of our article to give a summary account ers of Mesopotamia, which were undertaken to enof the extent and value of his discoveries, with canals, spreading like net-work over the surroundsure a constant supply of water to the innumerable some examination of his theories as to the ancient ing country, and which, even in the days of AlexAssyrian history, its successive empires and dy-ander, were looked upon as the works of an ancient nasties; to inquire what we have actually gained nation. No wonder that the traditions of the presfor Asiatic history and for the progress of man-ent inhabitants of the land should assign them to kind; how far a way is opened to still further investigations into the language, character, habits, civilization, of the race of Assur; of the great people who preceded the rise and fall of Babylon; who were the first traditionary conquerors of Western Asia; who appear at the height of power, probably under one of their later dynasties, in the biblical histories; are denounced in the fulness of their pride and glory by two at least of the ancient seers of Israel, Isaiah and Nahum ;-Pp. 7-9. and described as utterly razed from the earth by another (Ezekiel) probably an eye-witness of their total desolation.

one of the founders of the human race! The Arab and the city built by Athur, the lieutenant of Nimwas telling me of the connection between the dam rod, the vast ruins of which were now before usof its purpose as a causeway for the mighty hunter to cross to the opposite palace, now represented by the mound of Hammum Ali-and of the histories and fate of the kings of a primitive race, still the favorite theme of the inhabitants of the plains of and I fell asleep as we glided onward to Bagdad. Shinar, when the last glow of twilight faded away,

Still there seems no doubt, from Mr. Layard's subsequent and successful excavation in the mound of Kouyunjik—one of the mounds opposite to Mosul-as well as those made by him at Nimroud, and by M. Botta at Khorsabad, that each or all of these places, and others adjacent or intermediate, where the same great mounds appear, were, if not parts of one vast city, the successive localities occupied or comprehended by Nineveh under its successive dynasties. As (though unquestionably in a very much more extensive period of time) Babylon, Seleucia, Ctesiphon, Bagdad, succeeded each other on sites at no considerable distance, so as to be loosely described as the same city; in

The first question with Mr. Layard was the place of his operations; of this he seems to have entertained little doubt. The vast plain of level débris broken by huge mounds, which spreads from the bank of the Tigris opposite Mosul, had long been called by tradition the site of Nineveh. But all excavations there had been nearly unproductive the objects discovered, from time to time, neither valuable nor exciting to further toil. M. Botta had totally failed in his attempts in that quarter. But Mr. Layard's interest had been already powerfully directed to another quarter, to Nimroud, at about five hours' distance by the wind-like manner, from that imperial caprice which ing river.

seems almost to be a characteristic of great eastern sovereigns, each proud of being the founder As I descended the Tigris on a raft, I again saw of his own capital, the temples or palaces which the ruins of Nimroud, and had a better opportunity it is manifest stood on every one of these sites, of examining them. It was evening as we ap- differing as they apparently do in age, and to a proached the spot. The spring rains had clothed the mound with the richest verdure, and the fertile certain extent in the character of their art, may meadows, which stretched around it, were covered each have been the Nineveh of its day, the chief with flowers of every hue. Amidst this luxuriant dwelling-place and centre of worship of the kings vegetation were partly concealed a few fragments and of the gods of Assyria; and so no one of of bricks, pottery, and alabaster, upon which might these being absolutely destroyed, but deserted be traced the well-defined wedges of the cuneiform only, and, if we may so speak, gone out of fashcharacter. Did not these remains mark the nature ion, this aggregate of cities-this cluster of alof the ruin, it might have been confounded with a natural eminence. A long line of consecutive narmost conterminous capitals—may have then gone row mounds, still retaining the appearance of walls by the proverbial name, the City of Three Days' or ramparts, stretched from its base, and formed a Journey, just like Thebes of the Hundred Gates; vast quadrangle. The river flowed at some dis-or the poetic hyperbole of the Book of Jonah may tance from them: its waters, swollen by the melt- be taken to the strict letter; and the prophet's ing of the snows on the Armenian hills, were first day's slow and interrupted pilgrimage through broken into a thousand foaming whirlpools by an the streets may not have led him to the palace of artificial barrier, built across the stream. On the

eastern bank the soil had been washed away by the the king. In this conjecture, which occurred to current; but a solid mass of masonry still with- us on reading the earlier part of this work, we stood its impetuosity. The Arab, who guided my rejoice to find that we have anticipated the consmall raft, gave himself up to religious ejaculations clusion of Mr. Layard. The hypothesis in fact