She then gave me-I shall never forget the beautiful coin-a King William and Mary crown-piece. I was dumb with gratitude; but sallying out to the streets I saw at the first bookseller's shop a print of" Elijah, fed by the Ravens." Now, I had often heard my poor mother saying confidentially to our worthy neighbour, Mrs. Hamilton-whose strawberries I had pilfered-that in case of my father's death-and he was a very old man-she knew not what would become of her. "But," she used to add, "let me not despair, for Elijah was fed by the ravens." When I presented her with the picture, I said nothing of its tacit allusion to the possibility of my being one day her supporter; but she was much affected, and evidently felt a strong presentiment.

Nothing is more certain, although it has been very differently represented, that Campbell, when at college, won golden opinions from all. His warmth and tenderness of heart, his mature judgment, enlivened by sallies of wit and humour, endeared him alike to masters and to fellowcollegians. Among the latter, he was, indeed, regarded as a prodigy, and often copied as a standard authority in the various branches of study and composition.

"This superiority," says his biographer, however, which in other cases would have excited jealousy, and alienated less gifted minds, had no such effect on that of young Campbell. His character, at once open-hearted, and openhanded, was destitute of any thing like selfishness, and drew the circle of his friends more and more closely around him. Always disposed to help those who sought his assistance, he awakened in their minds a feeling of gratitude as well as of admiration. He was looked upon, not with envy, but affectionnot as one who monopolised the prizes in every class, but as one whose talents reflected lustre upon the whole body of students. He spoke their sentiments, shared their sympathies, advocated their rights, and was regarded as their friend and representative-one to whom they could point with just pride and confidence, whenever the discipline of the university might be called in question, and say,This is a youth after our own hearts-this is one of ourselves!'"

It is truly remarkable and distressing to think that when the tide of misfortune fell with oppressive weight upon the poet's family, that nothing better could be obtained for a youth who had so pre-eminently distinguished himself at college, than a poor tutorship in the remote Hebrides! Such a reward for assiduity and success gives little encouragement to others. To young Campbell, however, a residence in Mull was not unprofitable. Copious translations from the Greek dramatists occupied much of his leisure, and he laid in a never-failing stock of poetic imagery, from those grand phenomena of nature which were here actually forced upon his observation. Dr. Beattie also traces to a correspondence held at this period with a college friend-Hamilton Paul--a brother bard, and prize-man, of some years' standing-the origin of a great idea. Mr. Paul had, in answer to the poet's complaints of ennui in his seclusion, sent to him some lines on solitude, of which he said, banteringly:-" We have now three Pleasures by first-rate men of genius, viz., "The Pleasures of Imagination'- The Pleasures of Memory,' and 'The Pleasures of Solitude!' Let us cherish The Pleasures of Hope,' that we may soon meet in Alma Mater!" "His facetious correspondent," remarks Dr. Beattie, "little imagined that while exhorting Campbell to 'cherish the Pleasures of Hope,' he was suggesting, and predicting the very theme which, within three years from that date, was to establish his reputation as a classic poet."

6

Campbell resumed his duties as college-tutor upon his return from Mull; he had also some private pupils, among whom, was Lord Cuninghame, of the Justiciary Court of Edinburgh, and who has furnished Feb.-VOL. LXXXV. NO. CCCXXXVIII.

R

some pleasing reminiscences of his former tutor to Dr. Beattie. On quitting the university, Campbell was once more exiled to the Highlands, as domestic tutor to the present Sir William Napier. Like most men of genius, our young poet was exceedingly susceptible of the feeling of love, and he diversified his residence in the Highlands, as he had previously done at Mull, with a romantic passion for one of whom he wroteDear, precious name-rest ever unreveal'd!

Nor pass these lips, in holy silence seal'd.

One or two active friends entered at this period into active negotiations to get Campbell an opening as a student for the bar, but for want of a few hundred pounds, it appears that they totally failed; and thwarted in his legal ambition, he turned to poetry with more devotion than ever, and thus we have to thank this and similar disappointments for "The Pleasures of Hope." The publication of this poem, which went through four editions in a twelvemonth, and which followed closely upon Campbell's first sojourn in Edinburgh, made him known to all the men of the day, Brougham, Jeffrey, Dugald Stewart, &c. It also provided him with the means of making a tour on the Continent. In a work of minute detail, like that of Dr. Beattie, we find many little incidents taking place in the poet's career between these more striking episodes of his life, but which it is impossible to notice here. Such, for example, were at this period his attempt to establish a magazine in Glasgow, and his projected emigration to America; such, also, were his various relations with contemporary genius, so minutely and interestingly recorded by his biographer.

The continental tour is, also, a rich subject for the biographer. It is well known that the fruits of this tour were the noblest lyrics of modern times. "Hohenlinden," suggested by witnessing the battle from a neighbouring monastery, is one of the grandest battle-pieces ever drawn. "Ye Mariners of England" was written at Hamburgh, with a Danish war in prospect; and the "Exile of Erin," a gentler breathing of the affections, was suggested by meeting with a party of exiles who retained a strong love of their native country, and an exaggerated remembrance of their wrongs and sufferings. How these verses ran from lip to lip, and from heart to heart, wherever the British tongue was spoken, is now "a dream of the days of other years." They live, and will live, so long as wood grows and water runs-sacred as a cherished part of our thoughts, our language, and ourselves!

The first few years of his return were spent by the poet alternately in London, in Edinburgh, and in Liverpool, and in the advantageous society of Lord Minto, Sir W. Scott, Dr. Currie, and Roscoe. At length, in 1803, Campbell married Miss Matilda Sinclair, one of those pretty cousins whom he was ashamed to visit when in humble plight on his way to Mull, and he sat down to a steady course of literary industry in the great metropolis. Poets, however, were born to trouble, as he himself remarks, "as the sparks fly upwards!" Little ease or comfort followed upon the new domestic ties which he had drawn around him. One moment trying for a professorship in Poland, another engaged in vain pursuit of generous patrons or liberal publishers, it was not until after six years of drudgery and anxiety, that he attested by publishing his "Gertrude," and "Lord Ullin's Daughter," and the "Battle of the Baltic," that his poetical energies were by no means palled by disappointments. Amidst these perplexities, Campbell's conversational powers and convivial habits obtained for him a large circle of friends and acquaint

ances. Among these were Charles Fox, to whom he was afterwards indebted for being placed on the pension-list. The success of a course of lectures which he delivered as professor at the Royal Institution, also, led Mr. Murray to engage him in the well-known "Critical Essays and Specimens," the best of his prose works.

In the year 1820, Mr. Campbell entered upon the editorship of the New Monthly, which was conducted by him with a spirit worthy of his reputation, and a success quite equal to what could be expected in the state of periodical literature at that time.

If not practical and patient as a man of business, it is generally admitted that Campbell as an editor was brilliant. Dr. Beattie gracefully acknowledges what an able and zealous coadjutor Campbell found in Mr. Redding, but he avers at the same time that the poet devoted his time and energies to the service of the public. He was exceedingly impressed with the responsibility of the position, and he was constantly projecting fresher plans, and higher objects in the cause of literature. Yet while fastidious in his own writings, he was indulgent to those of others, and his kindly feelings sometimes got the better of his judgment. "Whenever poverty and distress came before him,” says his more partial biographer, "his critical severity was too apt to be disarmed; and while he thought he was but paying a just tribute to merit, he was, in fact, yielding to the compassionate impulse of his own heart."

Perhaps not the least sacrifice made to editorial duties was the cottage at Sydenham. It was to Campbell as he often said, "the greenest spot in memory's waste." And it was ever the sanctuary to which he fled, and in which he found certain relief under all the afflictions of his checquered course.

The subsequent literary labours of Mr. Campbell are almost identified with the New Monthly, which he continued to control for ten long years. During the same period, he interested himself eagerly in the foundation of the London University; he took an active part in the cause of Greece and Poland; and he was twice elected Lord Rector of his olden university. He also made a voyage to Algiers, of which he published an account in the New Monthly, afterwards collected and printed in two volumes.

Mr. Campbell sustained in 1830, in the loss of his wife, a blow which, to a man of his warm domestic affections, was irreparable. He resigned the editorship of the magazine; and the decline of his health and energy became evident from that time, and progressed steadily to his death. He established, it is true, the Metropolitan Magazine, and he published the "Life of Mrs. Siddons," and other works, but he was never afterwards himself; and he was ultimately obliged to retreat abroad, in the decline of his days, to recruit shattered bodily powers and faded spirits. The end was not long in coming.

It is impossible to take leave of so interesting a subject without expressing the high sense we entertain of the able and conscientious manner in which Dr. Beattie has accomplished his task of friendship. Himself a man of artistic tastes, and not fruitlessly addicted to the muse, his attachment to Campbell was throughout of the warmest description, and, true to the poet after death, it has enabled him, while entering into all the privacies of his subject, to show in a fuller manner than has heretofore been done, how with his share of human foibles, Campbell was a man to esteem and love, as well as a poet whose fame will last for ever.

LAYARD'S ASSYRIAN RESEARCHES.*

THE circumstances under which the first congregations of men, and the so-called great cities of antiquity, existed, as in the case of Babylon and Nineveh, appear to have borne little or no analogy to what obtains in the present day; except in a minor degree, in some great oriental cities. We do not see in our times, cities, the quarters of which are at a distance of thirty miles, as the crow would fly, from one another: yet this is the distance of Nimrod, Dr. Layard's Nineveh, from Khorsabad, M. Botta's Nineveh. We do not see quarters of the same city detached from one another, alike isolated in their relics, as in the case of Khorsabad, Karakush, Karamles, &c., &c., and in their surrounding ramparts, four miles in circuit at Nuniyah-the Nineveh of the natives-and two parasangs in extent at Nimrod. Yet, as it is with the plain of Assyria, so it is with that of Babylonia; and all we can say is, that in those early times the palaces and the forts, the temples, treasuries, and strongholds, the towns and villages, the farms and the land that was tilled and cultivated to sustain the widely scattered population, gardens and fields, pastures and orchards, were all alike included under one name. only by such a supposition that we can give full force to the well-known scriptural passage in which Nineveh is spoken of as "an exceeding great city of three day's journey," or can bring into relation with existing things, the descriptions of the vast magnitude of Babylon and of Nineveh left to us by the ancients. Cellarius, commenting upon Strabo's statement, that Nineveh was much greater than Babylon, sensibly enough adds, that "hortos etiam et agros et alia inhabitata loca, ut Babylon, complexa."

It is

There is, however, every probability that palaces, strongholds, and temples, which were at a distance of thirty miles from one another on the great Nineveh territory, had distinct appellations. It has, for example, been advanced, that the name Ashdod is connected with the palatial ruins of Khorsabad; as in like manner, Xenophon, the first who visited Nimrod within historical times, calls it Larissa. When Xenophon was at Nimrod, which he notices as a city anciently inhabited by the Medes, he describes the Greeks as proceeding thence six parasangs, or eighteen miles, to a large uninhabited castle, standing near a town called Mespila, formerly inhabited, also, by the Medes. The distances given identify the castle with the ruins at Yarumjah, and the second city of the Medes, with the modern Nuniyah, and this identification has been adopted in all modern editions of the Anabasis, both in this country, on the continent, and in America. Since that, the German scholars (See Tuch and Olhausen in "Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgen-landischen Gesellschaft," 1848, Heft i., p. 117, and Heft iii., p. 366), have, also, shown that the Athenian did not, as was supposed, corrupt a Greek word meso-pulai, the

*Nineveh and its Remains: with an Account of a Visit to the Chaldean Christians of Kurdistan, and the Yezidis, or Devil Worshippers; and an Enquiry into the Manners and Arts of the Ancient Assyrians. By Austen Henry Layard, Esq., D.C.L.

† Essai de dechiffrement de l'Ecriture Assyrienne pour servir à l'explication du Monument de Khorsabad par Isidore Lowenstern.

middle pass, into Mespila, but that he hellenized a Semitic word Mauszil, or Mewssil "junctionis locus" into Mespila, just as the day before he had hellenized the Resen, or Al Resen, of Scripture, into Larissa.

The remarkable fact that Xenophon thus passed through Assyria Proper, noticing therein the two great sites of Nimrod and Nuniyah,-the one under the name of Larissa, and the other under that of Mespila,without ever noticing Nineveh, may possibly be owing to the loose manner in which that word was used by the Hebrews. The Greeks never knew aught but a simple dwelling of Ninos. But such an omission is of no more importance to the question in view, than it is whether Nimrod or Asshur founded the cities in question. It is sufficient for our purposes, that Xenophon distinguished the city of Larissa from that of Mespila, as distinct in position, as having a separate history, at least having certain distinct incidents connected with each, and as having different names. And in this he has been followed by all modern travellers, as well as by the dwellers in the land who call the one place Nimrod, and the other Nuniyah.

Oriental geographers are unanimous in asserting the identity of the ruins opposite Mosul with the city or dwelling of Ninus. Ibn Haukal Idrisi, and Ibn Batuta describe the ruins of Nuniyah as opposite Mosul. Abu-l-fada describes the ruins as those of the city to which the prophet Jonah-with whom be peace!—was sent. The tomb of the prophet is shown to the present day at the same spot. Travellers have also been unanimous in arriving at the same conclusion. The learned Rabbi Benjamin of Tudela, who travelled in the twelfth century, describes Nineveh as situated directly opposite Mosul; so also Tavernier, Niebuhr, Rich, Kinneir, Southgate, Texier, and all other travellers.

The only question raised has been one of extent; and this, if carried out to meet the records of Scripture and of Diodorus Siculus, would give to the term Nineveh so wide-embracing a sense, that it would actually comprise nearly the whole of Assyria Proper, or the country of Assyria as distinguished from the Assyrian empire, and the whole of the province of Aturia of the Romans.

The question is one of considerable difficulty, and we shall devote to it a few pages; first of all premising that the probable site of Nineveh, having been handed down to us by history and tradition, and the localities of Nuniyah, Nimrod, &c., having been visited previously by many travellers and explorers, the labours of Doctor Layard, while they reflect such a vast amount of credit upon his enterprise, skill, and perseverance, cannot, geographically or otherwise, be by any means converted, as has been done by a writer in the Quarterly, into a "discovery of Nineveh."

Dr. Layard first saw Nimrod, in 1840, from the mound of an Assyrian ruin at Hamman Ali, on the opposite side of the river, when in the company of Mr. Francis Ainsworth he was proceeding to Kalah Shirgat and Al Hadhr.

From the summit of an artificial eminence (he says) we looked down upon a broad plain, separated from us by the river. A line of lofty mounds bounded it to the east, and one of a pyramidical form rose high above the rest. Beyond it could be fairly traced the waters of the Zab. Its position rendered its identification easy. This was the pyramid which Xenophon had described, and near which the 10,000 had encamped; the ruins around it were those