(Preface, p. ix.) Had they been the real matter in dispute between the Covenanters and the later Stuarts, it would have been open to argument whether these principles or the opposing ones were really chargeable with the calamities of the time. But they were not the matter in dispute. The real parties in the great conflict which agitated Scotland between the Restoration and the Revolution were absolutism on the one hand, and the spirit of the Covenant on the other. The sovereign was intent upon undermining the liberties of his subjects. Those of his subjects, who formed the resisting party in Scotland, would acknowledge none but a Covenanting king. True it is that Charles and James could use the name of Episcopacy in pursuit of their great political object, but neither of them did it consistently, neither of them with a religious end. They preferred it to Presbytery because of its principles of civil obedience; but were perfectly ready to persecute, when it served their turn, the Scottish bishops by the Test Act, and to thwart, and as was then supposed weaken, the English Church by proclaiming Indulgences to non-conformity. But no one holds that English Dissent was really responsible for the imprisonment of the seven Bishops. Again, the Episcopal system was rigidly proscribed in Scotland after 1745, and we have never heard that the General Assembly disapproved of that proscription; but it is unjust to lay the blame of it on Presbyterianism. In their cruelties to the Covenanters the later Stuarts thought as much and no more of Prelacy for its own sake, than they thought of the interests of Puritanism when they favoured religious liberty in England, or than George II. thought of the interests of Presbytery when he passed laws against Episcopacy. Each was used in turn as a mere pretext, and had no more of connexion, for its own sake, with the real motives of the policy whose watchword it was made, than have the colours at an election with the principles of the contending parties. In both cases they deserve censure, though on different grounds-in England for the insidiousness of their purpose, in Scotland for their cruelty and tyranny (and, we may add, for their stupidity)—but even that cruelty and tyranny should not be condemned without inquiring whether those who suffered thereby were hot themselves in a degree to blame. Still less should a religious system be made responsible for those evils, which was not valued one whit by the persons who for their own ends committed them. Indeed, if there was any religious opinion whatever among the motives of that wicked policy, it was the opinion, which the Duke of Argyll regards with so much favour while he holds its enforcement premature, that the civil power ought to govern in matters of conscience. Above and apart from the painful recollections of that period and of the foregoing one, stands the name of Laud as a prelate and and a doctor, not of course without its specks, but yet bright to all after times. He was among the first to introduce a tone of some gentleness and charity into the views then usually taken of the Roman Church-a tone which implied no abatement of the protest against her abuses. He first checked the sway of that narrow and perilous view of the Gospel which now goes by the name of Calvinism, and which, in most of the countries where it has prevailed, has brought about its natural result, in a violent reaction against the whole scheme of its distinctive truths. He first arrested the downward course, upon which the Universities had been descending* for near three centuries from the freshness and vigour of their prime. His exaggerated notion of preroga tive he shared with full half England; his severity as a magistrate was the fault of his age. His virtues were conspicuously his own. The names of Ussher, Hall, Chillingworth, and Hales, and of many more whose cases Neal + has had the candour to record, bear witness to the fact that he was no slave to religious party, but sought to unite in the active service of the Church all who could be anywise content to remain within the precinct of her laws. The weariness of his dungeon, the insults of his trial, the terrors of the scaffold, did not abate his heart or hope. It is truly sung of him in his captivity, that he ' hath relied On hope that conscious innocence supplied, Nor is it by a party that his due praise should be rendered: his claim for reverence is upon every one of those who believe that the English Church, as she is, has shown a marked and providential adaptation to the character of the English nation; that she is the associate and in no small degree the guide of its destinies, and has along with it a great part assigned to her in acting, for good we trust and for peace, upon the future fortunes of Christendom and of the world. In conclusion, it is not without surprise that we find the Duke of Argyll recommending to his countrymen and co-religionists * Huber, 'Geschichte der Englischen Universitäten,' vol. ii. We may point to the cases of Dr. Downing, Vicar of Hackney, and Mr. Palmer, Vicar of Ashwell: names little known to us, but great in Neal's estimation. He also states that the Archbishop offered preferments to Selden.—(Part ii. ch. 3, of Toulmin's abridgment.) Wordsworth, Eccl. Sonnets, the the observance of Saints' days, the commemoration of particular periods of our Lord's career at periodical times, and the partial use of a Liturgy. Of course we concur in his æsthetic view of these subjects, and honour his freedom from the common prejudices regarding them: we also admire the language in which he has expressed his manful protest. But we wonder he should suggest, or allow it to be supposed that he suggests, measures like these as fit for practical adoption in Scotland. The supposed offence of Laud was, that he checked with so much tenacity the dilapidation of an ancient ritual system. It would surely have been a real one if, instead of keeping in their places the props which sustained the building, he had laboured to place them where there was no building to sustain. The observance of holy seasons, the application of art in music, or in architecture, or otherwise, to the service of religion, the employment of liturgical forms, if they are to produce any good, imply and require the very system of Christian teaching which the Duke of Argyll honestly but, as we think erroneously, repudiates, and under which men view the Church as a mother, her history as their school, her definitions as the great bulwarks of the faith revealed in Scripture, her continuous life as the peculiar witness, and her ordinances as the main channel, of communion with their Lord, her discipline over soul and body as the needful counterpart of those condescensions whereby, in the various forms of art, she uses the power of pleasure over the natural sense, and, even in the awful acts of worship, gives free scope to joy. Not to mention that the very discussion of these changes would put Scotland in a fury, their introduction, in a view which we may term utilitarian, would do nothing for the true religious life that undoubtedly and warmly breathes in Scottish Presbyterianism, but would tend to formality, dryness, and corruption. They would be as a fable without its moral, as a lock without its key, as the bright colours of the kaleidoscope which present no meaning; nay, they would exhibit a positive and repulsive incongruity, as pointed architecture for a factory, or as a crown upon the head of President Cass. They would give us a travestied, not an enlarged, Presbyterianism, But we need have no quarrel on this subject. These are prescriptions which the patient will certainly throw out of window, perhaps before the doctor has turned his back. We shall not for some considerable time see Knox added to St. John nor Melvill to St. Andrew in the Calendar, nor will the three-legged stool of Janet Geddes (p. 306)-which the Duke of Argyll seems likely to bring again into requisitionemulate, during our day or his, the wheel of St. Catherine or the gridiron of St. Lawrence. ART. ART. IV.-Nineveh and its Remains. By Austen Henry Layard, Esq., D.C.L. 2 vols. London, 1848. WE opened Mr. Layard's volumes, eager to resume our researches into the antiquities of those almost pre-historic cities, Nineveh and her vassals, which seem to have surrounded her on nearly every side; to assist in the disinterment of the palaces of the mythic Nimrod, Ninus, and Semiramis, which had perished from the face of the earth before the days of the later Hebrew prophets, and which, after a slumber of between 2000 and 3000 years, are for the first time brought again to light in the nineteenth century. Our interest had been deepened by the sight of the few specimens of Mr. Layard's treasures which had then been placed in the British Museum; still more by the Khorsabad sculptures sent to Paris by Monsieur Botta. Till within the last two months only the smaller bas-reliefs from Nimroud had reached England. Since that time a second portion has arrived, including the black marble obelisk. These articles, by the negligence or unwarrantable curiosity (we are unwilling to use stronger terms) of persons at Bombay, have suffered considerable damage, though by no means to the extent represented in the public journals. Some of the smaller ones, particularly those of glass, having been carelessly repacked, were found broken to atoms; some, including the most valuable specimens' (these are Mr. Layard's words), were missing, it is to be hoped not purloined by some over-tempted collector. Meantime the larger and more massive pieces are still reposing on the mud-beach of Bassora. 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 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. 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 Mr. Layard's proceedings; proceedings; and then, before much had been accomplished, carried away to accompany Mr. Layard in excursions in the neighbourhood, and indeed to some distance from the scene of his labours; we were to wander among the wild tribes of various manners, and still more various creeds, which people the districts to the west and north-west of the Tigris. But our impatience rapidly disappeared in such stirring and amusing companionship. We found in Mr. Layard not merely an industrious and persevering discoverer in this new field of antiquities, but an eastern traveller, distinguished we may say beyond almost all others, by the freshness, vigour, and simplicity of his narrative; by an extraordinary familiarity with the habits and manners of these wild tribes, which might seem almost intuitive, but is, we soon perceive, the result of long and intimate acquaintance, and perfect command of the language. No one has shown in an equal degree the power of adapting himself at once and completely, without surrendering the acknowledged superiority of the Frank, to the ordinary life of the Asiatic. Mr. Layard, without effort, teaches us more, and in a more light and picturesque manner, even than D'Arvieux; he seems as trustworthy, though far more lively and dramatic than Burckhardt. It is hardly too much to say that the history of the excavations and revelations, of his management of the Turkish rulers, of the wild chiefs whom the intelligence of his strange proceedings brought around him, of the labouring Arabs and Chaldeans whom he employed in his works, and the removal of the sculptures, with their embarcation on the Tigris, is as interesting as the discoveries themselves; while during the necessary suspension of his toil among the ruins, we are content to follow him into the villages of Mohammedans, Nestorian Christians, and Devil-worshippers, as if these were the sole or primary objects of his travels. 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 Englishman has gained this peculiar power of 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-hyperbolise oriental flattery-without any of the meanness of falsehood; to show that he fully understood these trickeries of oriental adulation-without giving offence; quietly to maintain and to enforce respect for European, |