180

TO THE MEMORY OF DANIEL WHEELER.

Amidst Owhyee's hills of blue,

And taro groves of Tooboonai,

Are gentle hearts which soon shall be
Sad as our own at thought of thee-
Worn sowers of Truth's holy seed,
Whose souls, in weariness and need,
Were strengthened and refreshed by thine;
For blessed by the Master's hand
To them and theirs, thy tender care,
Thy ministry and fervent prayer—
Grateful as Eshcol's clustered vine,
To Israel in their weary land!

And they who drew

By thousands round thee in the hour
Of prayerful seeking, hushed and deep,
That He, who bade His islands keep

Silence before. Him, might renew

Their strength with His unslumbering power:
Will they forget the pilgrim old—

The gray haired voyager on the wave-
Who in their solemn gatherings told
Of Him who came to seek and save
The wanderers from His Father's fold?
They too may weep that thou art gone;
That never more thy faithful lip
Shall soothe the weak-the erring warn
Of those who first, rejoicing, heard
Through thee, the Gospel's glorious word-

Seals of thy true apostleship!

Yet, if the brightest diadem,

Whose rays of living lustre burn
Around the ransomed ones in bliss,

Be evermore reserved for them,
Who here, through toil and trial, turn
Many to righteousness,-

TO THE MEMORY OF DANIEL WHEEler.

May they not think of thee as wearing
That star-like crown of light, and bearing
Amidst Heaven's bright and blissful band
The fadeless palm-branch in thy hand;
And joining with a seraph's tongue,
In that new song the elders sung,
In offering to its blessed Giver,
Thanksgiving, praise and love, forever!
Farewell!-

And though the ways of Zion mourn,
When her strong ones are called away,
Who like thyself have calmly borne,
The heat and burthen of the day;
Yet He who slumbereth not nor sleepeth,
His ancient watch about us keepeth,
Still, sent from his preparing hand
New witnesses for Truth shall stand-
New instruments to sound abroad,
The Gospel of our risen Lord;
To gather to the fold once more

The desolate and gone astray—
The scattered of a cloudy day,
And Zion's broken walls restore;
And, through the travail and the toil
Of true obedience, minister
Beauty for ashes, and the oil

Of joy for mourning unto her!
So shall her holy bounds increase
With gates of praise, and courts of peace;
So shall the Vine which martyr tears
And blood sustained in other years,

With fresher life be clothed upon;
And to the world in beauty show,
As the rose plant of Jericho,
And glorious as Lebanon!

16

181

Nineveh.

FOR very many centuries the hoary monuments of Egyptits temples, its obelisks, its tombs-have presented to the eye of the beholder strange forms of sculpture and of language: the import of which none could tell. The wild valleys of Sinai, too, exhibited upon their rocky sides the unknown writing of a former people whose name and existence none could trace. Among the ruined halls and palaces of Persepolis, and on the rock-hewn tablets of the surrounding regions, long inscriptions in forgotten characters seemed to enrol the deeds and conquests of mighty sovereigns: but none could read the record. Thanks to the skill and persevering zeal of scholars of the nineteenth century, the keys of these locked up treasures have been found: and the records have mostly been read. The monuments of Egypt, her paintings and her hieroglyphics, mute for so many ages, have at length spoken out and now our knowledge of this ancient people is scarcely less accurate and extensive than our acquaintance with the classic lands of Greece and Rome. The unknown characters upon the rocks of Sinai have been deciphered: but the meagre contents leave us still in darkness as to their origin and purpose. The cuneiform or arrow-headed inscriptions of the Persian monuments and tablets, have yielded up their mysteries, unfolding historical data of high importance; thus illustrating and confirming the few and sometimes isolated facts preserved to us in the scriptures and other ancient writings.

Austin Henry Layard brings before us still another step of progress. Here we have to do, not with hoary ruins that have borne the brunt of centuries in the presence of the world, but with a resurrection of the monuments themselves. It is the disentombing of temple-palaces from the sepulchre of ages: the recovery of the metropolis of a powerful nation from the

long night of oblivion.

Nineveh, the great city "of three days journey," that was laid waste and there was none to bemoan her," whose greatness sank when that of Rome had just begun to rise, now stands forth again, to testify to her own splendour, and to the civilization and power, and magnificence of the Assyrian Empire. This may be said, thus far, to be the crowning historical discovery of the nineteenth century.

We first hear of Layard in 1840: when, after having in the preceeding year travelled with a single companion through all Syria, we find him visiting the mounds of Kalah-Shergat, and the ruins of el-Kather, the ancient Katra in the desert. As he afterward floated down the Tigris from Mosul to Bagdad; and passed, some sixteen miles below Mosul, the great mound of Nimroud, the most important of all: he formed the purpose of exploring at some future time these singular remains; and he subsequently called the attention of M. Botta, the French Consul at Mosul, to this particular spot. Meantime the latter began, in 1843, to excavate the mound of Kouyunjik, opposite Mosul but soon transferred his labours to Khorsabad, a mound and village, twelve miles northeast of Mosul, at the foot of the Kurdish Mountains. Here M. Botta's efforts were crowned with success; and Layard gracefully acknowledges, that "to him is due the honour of having found the first Assyrian monument." But most important as are these memorials, they are nevertheless surpassed in extent and antiquity by those found by Layard in the larger and more ancient edifices exhumed at Nimroud.

Besides the specimens of beautiful glass, and the pully, found at Nimroud, an unexpected discovery is that of the arch. The importance of this rests, not so much perhaps in the mere circumstance of a single small vaulted chamber, as in the fact brought out by Layard, that " arched gateways are continually represented in the bas-reliefs." It follows that the arch was well-known before the Jewish exile, and at least seven or eight

centuries before Herod. Diodorus Siculus also relates, that the tunnel from the Euphrates at Babylon, ascribed to Semiramis, was vaulted. All this serves to remove the difficulty, still felt by some, in respect to the antiquity of the vaults yet existing under the site of the temple at Jerusalem.

PALACE OF NIMROUD.

As there was a ravine running far into the mound, apparently formed by the winter rains, I determined to open a trench in the centre of it. In two days the workmen reached the top of a slab, which appeared to be both well preserved, and to be still standing in its original position. On the south side I discovered two human figures, considerably above the natural size, sculptured in low relief, and still exhibiting all the freshness of a recent work. In a few hours the earth and rubbish had been completely removed from the face of the slab, no part of which had been injured. The ornaments delicately graven on the robes, the tassels and fringes, the bracelets and armlets, the elaborate curls of the hair and beard, were all entire. The figures were back to back, and furnished with wings. They appeared to represent divinities, presiding over the seasons, or over particular religious ceremonies. Around his temples was a fillet, adorned in front with a rosette. The other held a basket in the left hand, and an object resembling a fir cone in the right. On his head he wore a rounded cap, at the base of which was a horn. The garments of both, consisting of a stole falling from the shoulders to the ancles, and a short tunic underneath descending to the knee, were richly and tastefully decorated with embroideries and fringes, whilst the hair and beard were arranged with study and art. An inscription ran across the sculpture. To the west of this slab, and fitting to it, was a corner stone ornamented with flowers and scroll work, tastefully arranged, and it was evident that I had at length discovered the earliest palace of Nimroud! The corner-stone led me to a figure of singular form. A human body, clothed in robes