deterred all the early Persian travellers from attempting to copy the inscriptions. At length, however, Major Rawlinson, who was employed on military duty in the province, succeeded in scaling the rock in the autumn of 1835; and between that period and the close of 1837, when his services were transferred to Teheran, having repeatedly visited the spot, he contrived to make a copy of a considerable portion of the Arian version of the record. During the two following years he was busily employed in deciphering and translating the portion which he had thus copied, and his various letters on the subject were read before the Royal Asiatic Society on January 4, 1840, as reported in the Athenæum, No. 639, p. 79. An interval of inaction now occurred, as Major Rawlinson was summoned to take part in the Afghan war; but in 1843 he returned to Baghdad, and in the summer of the following year he once more visited Behistun, and on this occasion, as he was furnished with ladders, he completed his copy of the Arian text, and also recovered considerable portions both of the Scythic and Semitic versions.

"The long-expected memoir on the Arian or Persian text of the great Behistun Inscription was completed in 1845, and was published in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society for 1846. There were still, however, some passages in the Arian text which required verification and completion, while of the other versions-especially of the Semitic version, the value of which as a key to the decipherment of the independent inscriptions of Assyria and Babylonia was becoming daily more apparent-large copies were entirely uncopied, so that one more visit to the Behistun rock was deemed indispensable. This was accordingly accomplished in 1848,

when Major Rawlinson not only obtained a large list of emendations and restorations of the published Arian text, but also carried off his most valuable trophy in a complete set of paper casts of the entire Scythic and Semitic versions, so far as the writing could be at all distinguished on the rock.

"In the following year Major Rawlinson returned to England and published the latest results of his labours, the corrections of the Persian text appearing in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society,' under date February 1, 1850, and the Semitic text being given at length, with an analysis, in the fourteenth volume of the Journal early in the ensuing year.

"On returning to Baghdad, at the close of 1851, Major Rawlinson handed over his casts of the Scythic version to Mr. E. Norris, the wellknown oriental scholar, who published from them an independent translation of the great Behistun Inscription in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society for 1852.'"

6

The inscription is occupied with a rehearsal of the glories of Darius, the wars he waged, the revolts he put down, and the enemies he vanquished. Each paragraph commences with the introductory formula, "Says Darius, the King;" and the royal modesty may be fairly said to culminate in two such paragraphs as the following:-"Says Darius, the King: By the grace of Ormazd, there is much else that has been done by me that upon this tablet has not been inscribed; on that account it has not been inscribed, lest he who might hereafter peruse this tablet to him the many deeds ( that have been done by me elsewhere should seem to have been falsely recorded (?).

(?)

Says Darius, the King: Those who have been kings before me, by them it has not been done as by me,

at all times under the favour of Ormazd."

Of this it may not illiberally be said that it requires all the piety to excuse the arrogance; but when piety seems to be the only good quality in a man-be he king or cobbler-it is a question whether it is on that account the more tolerable or intolerable.

The review of a book like the "Records of the Past" very naturally falls into the form of a statement and illustration of its contents, for it would be absurd and impertinent for any one outside the charmed circle of declared Assyriologists to debate, or to demur to, certain philogical principles and their applica

tion. We are glad to know that the reproach of the divergence and diversity of Assyriological exegesis is being rapidly wiped away; and that it is either in a position, or is fast approaching to the position, of a certain science, of which the rules and the instruments are as uniformly and infallibly recognized as those of Hellenic or Latin learning. And in conclusion we may express a sanguine hope that the labours—emphatically of love, as all labours of students are by sheer force of etymology-of Dr. Birch and his friends, young or old, as embodied in "Records of the Past," may meet with a wide, and prepare the way for an ever-widening, appreciation.

The

THE appellate jurisdiction of the Lords was abolished last Session by the Judicature Act, and a Supreme Court of Appeal constituted, but for England only. Scotland and Ireland have yet to be legislated for. present Cabinet has considered the matter of sufficient importance to occupy a prominent position in the Queen's Speech. It is suggested that the re-arrangement of the judicature and the blending of the administration of law and equity, which the Act of last Session effected for England, should be extended on the same principles to Ireland, and a Bill will be submitted to Parliament with this view. This proposal involves something more than providing a Court of Final Appeal for Ireland in place of the House of Lords, it involves the entire rearrangement of our equity judicature; and this undoubtedly is a reform that is urgently required.

It is impossible to notice this sub

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ject without adverting to the published views of so eninent an authority as the Right Hon. Jonathan Christian, Lord Justice of Appeal, who is, without exception, one of the most distinguished equity lawyers that ever adorned the Irish bench. most decidedly disapproves of the recent change by which the appellate jurisdiction of the House of Lords has been abolished and the new Supreme Court created. Ireland had such full and perfect confidence in the Lords, as a court of last resort, that during an experience of forty years the Lord Justice never heard the faintest whisper of dissatisfaction. He would, therefore, desire nothing. better for Ireland than the continuance of the appellate jurisdiction of the Lords; but this cannot now be, because it is the reverse of desirable that there should be two separate courts of final appeal-one for England the other for Ireland. "If," as he truly says, "the Union has

grown to be anything better than a bond of parchment, if it has penetrated at all the moral and intellectual tendencies and social life of the Irish People, if it has within it any principle of life and growth, it is to the Unity of Jurisprudence far more than to the Act of Union these things are owing." The unity of jurisprudence, this "most precious. unity," his lordship rightly declares, has been principally maintained by "the absolute identity of the Supreme Appeal" between Great Britain and Ireland; and although he does not think the new Supreme Court is likely to possess the same undoubted diguity and command the same unbounded confidence and respect as that of the Lords did, still unity is so desirable, that in favour of its preservation all other considerations must give way.

This agreed upon, the next matter for consideration is the composition of the Supreme Court of Appeal. The Lord Justice is of opinion, and we believe rightly so, that the best thing to do would be to "extend the new court to Ireland and Scotland, simpliciter, without making any change at all in the composition which the Judicature Act has already given it." He is opposed to appointing Irish or Scotch members simply on account of their nationality, and for the purpose of keeping up a certain divisional proportion of members in the court, the inevitable tendency of which, his lordship reasonably dreads, would be, to separate the supreme tribunal into three sections or divisions, for the transaction of English, Irish, and Scotch business, thereby effectually destroying what it is above all things necessary to maintain-unity of jurisprudence in the Supreme Court itself.

With respect to the proposal that the Lord Chancellor of Ireland should be an ex officio member of the Supreme Court, the Lord Justice

is most decidedly opposed to it, and in our judgment his reasons are most cogent and conclusive. The time has come when the office should be abolished. It has long survived any utility that ever attached to it. It has become as much out of time and place, and as pernicious in its influence, as the Viceroyalty itself, and in the interest of Ireland both should be swept away. It is now a wholly unnecessary office, and some of the objections to its continuance are pithily stated by the Lord Justice :

"The tenure of the Chancellorship is transitory. It presents the evil union of judge with political partizan—Irish party and politics, be it always remembered. It depends upon the minister's ability to maintain a majority in the House of Commons-a matter in which the present close balance of parties in Great Britain has given to what is called the Irish vote an ominous importance. Then, the office being thus political, and the holder of it being usually the chief Irish member of the Irish Government, he is prone to become the centre of shabby Irish politics, should his breeding or his associations have been such as to incline him in that way."

The greatest objection to the continuance of the Irish Chancellorship undoubtedly is, that it has become more a reward for political partizanship than for eminent judicial qualifications. "Will any one," asks his lordship, "have the boldness to affirm that judicial service is what this incubus is now maintained for, or that its pretension to hold the position of the Chief Equity judgeship is any longer more than mere simulation and anachronism?" The last appointment is referred to as amply justifying these remarks, and as fully illustrating the vicious groove into which the nomination to the Irish Chancellorship has fallen. The Lord Justice complains that the late government appointed their Irish Chancellor solely with a view to conciliate the

support of the Irish Roman Catholic hierarchy, and not because the person selected had any special fitness or legal qualifications for the office, as it was quite the reverse, for he was utterly unversed in chancery practice :

"As a practising barrister he achieved a respectable success, but it lay, from first to last, with an exclusiveness here unprecedented, within a particular speciality. For the purpose now in hand, let it suffice to say that his estrangement from the Court of Chancery and its jurisprudence was, throughout, as entire and unchequered as that of any serjeant who ever wore the coif in the Common Pleas of England could by possibility have been. Of no other Irish barristers of mark could this have been said with a literalness so unique. With others it would be a question of degree, with him it was absolute.

"It may, it is confidently believed, be taken to be no less than a literal truth that the first problem of equity law that ever seriously engaged his thoughts was the first that he had to decide in his capacity of Lord Chancellor. Or, if any unnoted exceptions there were, they must have been of a rareness and triviality so infinitesimal as would prove the rule.

"Even at Common Law his reputation was rather that of the eloquent jury advocate than of the erudite lawyer in banco. Nor has the true point d'appui from which his fortunes made their wondrous advance lay elsewhere than at the Four Courts. One incident

may be noted as marking with precision his pre-official forensic grade. When selected by the late Lord Carlisle for the Solicitor-Generalship (being then in the twenty-fifth year of his standing) he was still, a thing unprecedented, holding the place of a county judge; an office, no doubt, both honourable and useful, but not (in those days at least) usually retained after reaching any notable eminence. There is not now upon the Superior Bench one other judge by whom it was ever held, and to most of them an offer of it at a corresponding stage of his career would have been regarded as a slight. His promotion to a puisne judgeship in the

Common Pleas was not much remarked upon, as it was but the ordinary sequel to his tenure of law-office; but men held their breaths when it went out that one bred in such a school was about to occupy the seat of Sugden and of Redesdale.

"Other incongruities, more inward, might be dwelt upon, but the writer has confined himself to a bare narration of overt facts, which were notorious in Ireland when this event took place, and are incapable of denial, unless it might be within some little circle of kindred or dependents, or expectants. They are here detailed in no spirit of disparagement or ill-will towards the eminent person whose professional course they outline. Nor do they import aught of discredit or derogation, unless to fall below a very high standard of excellence must be regarded as such. The writer has kept well within the limits of his allotted task. person is, to him, nothing; the embodiment of the danger he is rising his voice of warning against, much. has stated not more than enough, but yet, he trusts, enough, for that essential step in his argument, the bringing out in distinct relief the phase of its history upon which the Irish Chancellorship has at length definitely entered. The coup d'état of 1868 has conclusively settled that. It carried the office, once for all, across the line at which it had been hesitating since 1846. Its legal and judicial ascriptions have faded into the background, its political have come to the front.

The

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And what has been the result? . The Chancellorship of Ireland-the proposed supplier, in permanency, of the chief adjunct for Irish business to the new Court of Supreme Appeal—stands proclaimed to all aspirants as a post to the candidature for which, hereafter, no habituation to the jurisprudence of Equity or the erudition of the Common Law will be needed, but, in place of them, the one all-atoning, all-sufficing merit, the favour of some set or faction potent in electioneering. It would be a grievous error to regard this act as one that could not be imitated by any future Minister. The example is much more likely to be bettered than shunned."

It may seem invidious to mix up

persons with the discussion of a question like this; and, as a rule, we admit it is best to exclude persons, and deal with the abolition or retention of an office, per se, on its own merits. But in this instance, we can well understand how reluctantly the Lord Justice found himself compelled to adopt the course he did, because the very pith and marrow, the gravamen of the objections to the continuance of the office, is, that it has been perverted from its original purpose-that it has now become more political than judicial in its character, and, therefore, that its abolition is called for.

It is notorious that no minister dare have made such an appointment in England. The English Bar would have repelled, with prompt indignation, such an insult, and public opinion would have been equally emphatic in expressing condemnation. No greater proof could be given of the degraded provincialism into which Ireland has sunk, than the abject submissiveness with which all the evils that result from corrupt party government are patiently endured. There is no such thing as enlightened independent public opinion in the country, nor will there ever be while the existing system of administration is continued.

The changes proposed by the Lord Justice, in the hope of producing a better order of things, are all admirable and most desirable, except retaining the chancellorship merely as a political office, and we earnestly hope that the present cabinet may have the sound statesmanship and courage to deal with them :

"1. Reunite to the Court of Chancery those branches of its old jurisdiction of which it has been stripped during the last quarter of a century. The exigency which, in 1849, called for a separate land tribunal no

longer exists.

There is now no

reason whatever why the Court of Chancery should not resume its proper place as the leading forum for all real estate affairs. Abolish, then, the Landed Estates Court, and transfer all its peculiar title-giving and title-recording powers to Chancery. Neither does there seem to be any necessity for a separate Court of Bankruptcy and Insolvency. Abolish that also. Let one of the vice-chancellors (to be after mentioned) be, as in England, chief judge of the Dublin district, with power of delegation, as there, to a competent registrar; and let the assistant barristers be, like the county-court judges in England, the "local bankruptcy judges" for the country districts; with right of appeal to the chief judge, and from him to the Court of Appeal in Chancery. The effect of these changes would be no more than to replace the Court of Chancery in Ireland in its old position, and in the same position as the Court of Chancery in England is still in as to the sources of its business, but intervallo lougissimo as to amount.

"2. Remodel the Court of Chancery itself to suit its renovated status. Begin by clearing off its dead weight. Abolish the Chancellorship; that is to say, let the office cease after the first vacancy that shall occur after a date to be named. Or retain it as a political office, but withdraw it from all relations with the administration of justice.

"3. So much for demolition-now for reconstruction. Move up the Master of the Rolls from his present position of a judge of the first instance to the Presidency of the Court of Appeal. And, as he would thus be placed at the head of the Equity department, raise him in rank and salary to a level with the head of the law department, the Chief Justice of Ireland. To sup