practical bearings on the welfare of the state, and Sir Roderick is regarded as the dispenser of any good things which geology has to bestow in its state relations. It is one of Scotland's boasts that she has all along taken the lead in geology; and at the present moment the number of Scotch geologists of eminence is far greater than that of any other country. In proof of this we have only to mention the names of Lyell, Murchison, Miller, Ramsay, Nicoll, Bryce, Page, M'Laren, besides a host of others of minor note. The intellectual position of Scotland must mainly depend on her schools of geology and metaphysics. England must be allowed to take the lead in the higher departments of learning and science, but this not from any want of aptitude in the Scotch mind for these pursuits. The cause can be traced to the want of those fostering appliances which England possesses, so largely, in her collegiate and other institutions. mer-Royal, would be present, and bring his controversy with Dr. Scoresby, regarding the magnetism of ships, to a close. The latter has long devoted his attention to the subject of magnetism in general, and recently, more especially, to the magnetism of ships as affecting their compasses. In following out his researches he came to a conclusion which threw doubt upon the efficacy of a plan, devised by the Astronomer-Royal, for the correction of compasses in iron ships. This led to a controversy in the pages of the Athenæum, in which a good deal of warmth was displayed. Mr Airy, who stands very much upon his dignity, refused, on this plea, to carry on the controversy any further; but he did not retire from the field till, in the opinion of the most competent judges, he had the worst of the argument. He, however, did not make his appearance at the British Association, so that Dr. Scoresby was under the necessity of expounding his views in the absence of his The Rev. Dr. Scoresby is another of the opponent, and his exposition appeared to veteran members of the Association, and bring universal conviction. The point is a general favourite. He has goodness maintained was, that an iron ship, when and amiability stamped on every feature. building, became a great magnet, with its Those who, in their boyhood, were charm- poles in a definite direction in reference to ed with Arctic adventure by the reading the hull of the ship, and that when the of his books, would be much surprised by ship put to sea, the poles, by various finding so little of the hardy adventurer causes, were liable to change their posiin the outer man. From his pale, thin, tion; so that a correction which was emaciated features and slender form, you good at starting, would not serve after would think him the last man to cope this change had been produced. The with icebergs and polar bears. On re-establishment of this point is of vital tiring from sea he entered into the service of the Church of England. He has a living in that Church, but he constantly resides at Torquay we believe mainly for the benefit of his health. He breathes the spirit of a devout Christian, and is not ashamed to shew this among his brother savans, when fit occasions present them-ligion. No such testimony can be borne selves. Speaking of the probability of the lives of Franklin and his men being prolonged, more than was believed by some, he gave as one ground for his belief, that the hopes, and comforts, and responsibilities of the Christian faith would tend to sustain life, and enable them to bear up under their hardships better than if they had no such aids. moment for the interests of commerce and the preservation of human life; and that he has established his point is now almost universally admitted. We have alluded to the reverential spirit of Dr. Scoresby, and his readiness to make science bring its tribute to re in favour of the Astronomer-Royal. The name of God, or any allusion to a Supreme Being, never occurs in his writings, though, in his popular lectures, the most favourable opportunity was presented; and in private the same reticence is observed. We have in this the evil effects of the influence of one absorbing pursuit. The higher faculties of the mind are It was hoped that Mr. Airy, the Astrono- paralysed, and everything is ignored that cannot be reduced to a mathematical formula. The idea of a God is apt to be renounced, as it cannot be arrived at by the solution of an equation. Did Mr. Airy exhibit in the Mechanical Section some ingenious machine, in whose praises he was loud, he would be bound, in common fairness, to give the inventor's name. And is it fair or right that he should so eloquently expound the wondrous mechanism of the heavens to listening artisans, and never once mention the Author of the world-machine? It is often asked, Whether this or that pursuit has an injurious effect upon the development of character; but, put simply in this way, the question is a very idle one. The varied intellectual pur suits in which a man may engage may be compared to the dishes of a varied dietary. Let a man live exclusively on one of these, and his bodily frame will likely become impoverished and enfeebled; while a harmonious and wise combination would consolidate and strengthen. As we have varied phases of intellectual and spiritual life, so, for our full development, we have need to draw aliment from very varied sources; and what would be poisonous if used exclusively, may, when properly combined, exercise a most healthful influence on our mind and character. We have much faith in the healthful influence of astronomy, but it is quite possible to be a very great astronomer and yet a very little man. B. B. COLONEL RAWLINSON'S ASSYRIAN DISCOVERIES. IT cannot but arrest the attention of the Christian Church, and fill it with deepest thankfulness for the goodness, and wonder at the providence of God, that, at the very time when infidelity was making one of its last and fiercest attacks upon the historical facts of Scripture, knowing well how inseparably connected these were with its revealed doctrines, confirmations of these facts, in all their minute details, should be furnished from the rubbish of cities buried in their grave before the Christian era! It is as if one rose from the dead to testify in favour of Moses and the Prophets. We have heard, with interest, how the remains of fish, which swam in the primeval seas of the old world, have been exhumed and made to enrich the fields of England, thus giving food to the sower and bread to the eater and becoming once more a means of life in the world after having been buried thousands, perhaps millions of years ago Analogous to this economy in God's kingdom, by which nothing is wasted, but everything, sooner or later, turned to the best account, and its fragments gathered up, is the resurrection of those fossil slabs and inscriptions from the mounds of Nineveh and the ruins of Babylon, which are now made to enrich the fields of Biblical research, and to bring forth much fruit to God's glory. was necessarily a resume of what he had already said in spring before the Asiatic Society in Bombay, and which has been subsequently published in the Atheneum and other journals, we shall content ourselves with a few extracts that may inform and interest our readers. THE ANTIQUITIES COLLECTED. "They were arranged in three different classes, and were intended to illustrate three distinct periods of history. The most ancient class was Chaldean; the second was Assyrian ; and the third was Babylonian. The Chaldean class consisted of relics found at the primitive capitals of Southern Chaldea, which are now represented by the ruins of Mugheir (Ur of the Chaldees), of Warka (Erech of Genesis), of Senkerch (Enasar of Genesis), of Niffer (Accad), and the neighbouring sites. Among the relics were stamps of the cuneiform legends impressed on the bricks of the ancient palaces and temples, a number of inscribed cones of baked clay, and a small tablet of black marble, bearing a well-preserved legend in the ancient hieratic character; and the period to which the relics belonged was stated to extend from about the twentieth to the thirteenth century B.C." CONFIRMATION OF GENESIS XIV. 9. "Col. Rawlinson referred to the brick legends of one of the Chaldean kings, Ismi-Dagon by name, and shewed that by a series of dates, for We listened with great delight to Colonel Rawlinson's lecture upon Assyrian antiquities, delivered during the meeting of the British Association in Glasgow, and especially to those statements which he seemed so pleased in mak-tunately preserved upon the Assyrian monuing, both in public and in private, of his thorough conviction, as proved, even by the Assyrian monuments, of the minute accuracy of the Old Testament in its geography, ethnography, and history. ments, the interval between this monarch and Sennacherib was determined to be 1150 years, so that the former king must have ascended the throne of Chaldea in the early part of the nineteenth century BC. But Ismi-Dagon was not But as the lecture which he then delivered, the first monarch of his line. Relics had been obtained of several of his predecessors, one of minutely agreeing with the fragments of Assyrwhom was named Kudur-mapula, the ravager ian history preserved to us by the Greeks. From of Syria,' and it was pointed out that this epithet naturally suggested an identity with the Chedorlaomer of Scripture. The latter form, indeed, seemed to be a corruption of Kuddur-el-Ahmar, or Kudur the Red,' and to refer to the king's Semitic nationality, a conflict of races at that time having pervaded the East, and the Scythian or Cushite aborigines being termed the black,' while the Semitic invaders were distinguished as * the red."" CONFIRMATION OF JEWISH HISTORY. "The most brilliant period of Jewish history -that is the age of David and Solomon-unfortunately admitted of no illustration from the Assyrian annals. The contemporary monarchs of Nineveh were occupied with the building of cities and the adornment of their palaces and temples, or with expeditions among the northern mountains; but they were hardly yet strong enough to provoke a contest with the organized armies of the kings of Syria It was at the commencement of the ninth century B.C., shortly after the building of Samaria, that the Assyrians first undertook the subjugation of the countries on the Mediterranean; and from that period to the extinction of the empire, the annals of Nineveh, running in a parallel line with Jewish history, presented a series of notices, which established in the most conclusive manner the authenticity of the Hebrew Scriptures. The geographical names which occurred in the Bible were also found in the inscriptions. The names of the kings of Israel and Judah, of Damascus and of Nineveh, were given in the two independent accounts under the same forms, in the same order of succession, and with the same chronological relations. The same events even were described, with that mere variation of colouring which was due to national feeling In the earliest expedition into Syria of this period, that undertaken by Asshur-uchar-bal, the builder of the North West Palace at Nimrud, early in the ninth century B.C, the Assyrians did not come in direct contact with the Jews, though they overran the whole country as far south as Damascus, and even exacted tribute from the maritime cities of Phoenicia The succeeding king, Silima-rish, fought several battles with Ben Hadad, and, after the dethronement of the latter, with the usurper Hazael, while he also received rich presents from Jehu, who is called in the inscriptions the son of Omri, from having sat on the throne of Samaria. The annals of the next king, Shamasphul, extended but to four years, during which the wars of the Assyrians were confined to Asia Minor and Babylonia and of his successor, Phulukh (the Pul of Scripture and Phaloch of the LXX), no strictly historical record had yet been found. The interesting fact, however, had been discovered that this king married a foreign princess of the name of Sammuramit (or Semiramis), and that having lost his throne, by a domestic revolution, to a stranger of the name of Tiglath-Pileser (the Second), the upper royal line of Assyria, after a dynastic rule of 528 years, terminated in his person, all this the death or dethronement of Pul commenced the second or lower Assyrian line, the epoch being marked in Babylonian history as the era of Nabonassor, and dating from B.c. 774. Of Tiglath. Pileser, the first king of the lower dynasty, annals had been found extending to his 17th year, and among his tributaries were many names which were of interest from Scriptural associa tion, such as Menahem of Samaria, Rezin of Damascus, liram of Tyre, the kings of Byblos, of Casias, of Carchemish, of Hamath, and even a queen of the Arabs, who seemed to have reigned in Idumea or Arabia Petræa, and who was the representative, in regard to race and station, of the famous queen of Sheba, who had visited Solomon about two and a-half centuries before. "According to Scripture history, TiglathPileser must have been succeeded by Shalmane. ser, a name which had not yet been found in the inscriptions, but which had originally headed, it was believed, certain mutilated tablets recording the wars of an Assyrian monarch with Hoshea (?) king of Samaria, and with a son of Rezin of Damascus." CONFIRMATION OF 2 KINGS XVIII. AND XIX. "Shalmaneser succeeded his father, TiglathPileser, on the throne of Nineveh about в c. 728. He laid siege to Samaria in 724-23, and while engaged in that operation was surprised by the revolt of Sargon, who ultimately drove him from power and established himself in his place in B.C. 721. Sargon's first act was to bring the siege of Samaria to a close, and the account of the Samaritan captivity given in the inscriptions corre sponded closely with that preserved in scripture. Halah, Habor, indeed, and the river of Gozan, where the expatriated tribes were placed, and which had been so variously identified by geographers, were proved by the inscriptions to be represented by the modern Nimrud, and by the two rivers, the Khaboor and the Mygdonius, the latter Greek term being a mere participial form. ation of Gozan, which was the original Assyrian name of the city of Nisibin. The annals of Sargon were preserved in great detail and were re. plete with notices of much historical interest. His wars were described with Merodach Baladan, the king of Babylon, with the kings of Ashdod, of Gaza, of Hamath, of Carchemish, and of many other Syrian cities He received tribute from Pharaoh of Egypt, from the Queen of the Arabs and her confederate the chief of Sheba (or the Saboans who at that period dwelt in Edom.) There was a distinct account, moreover, of the expedition to Cyprus (which was referred by the Greeks to Shalmaneser); and Sargon's memorial tablet had been discovered in the Island. history of Western Asia, indeed, at the close of the eighth century B C., was given in the most elaborate detail in the inscriptions of Khorsabad, which was Sargon's capital, and in every respect was found to coincide with the contemporary annals of the Jews. Verifications of still more importance had followed from the discovery of The the annals of Sennacherib, who succeeded his father Sargon in в C 702. His wars with Illulous of Sidon, and with Merodach Baladan and his sons, were in near accordance with the notices of the Greeks, and the famous Assyrian expedi. tion, which Sennacherib led against Hezekiah of Jerusalem, as given in the native annals, coin. cided in all essential points (even to the numbers of the thirty talents of gold which the Jewish king paid as a peace-offering) with the Scriptural record of the event. It was not to be expected that the monarch of Assyria would deliberately chronicle his discomfiture under the walls of Jerusalem and his disastrous retreat to Nineveh; but there was the significant admission in his annals that he did not succeed in capturing the Jewish capital, and this was sufficient to attest the interposition of a miraculous power." BIRS NIMRUD. The origin and history of the well known ruin at Babylon called the Birs Nimrud, or Nimrod, has been long an interesting inquiry. It has by many been always recognised as the remains of the tower of Babel! But Col. Rawlinson has at last made it tell its own story, after the silence of centuries. "A remarkable ruin, named Birs Nimrud, and situated on a mound in the vicinity of Babylon, had long been an object of curiosity to all travellers and antiquaries. The great height of the mound, its prodigious extent, and its state of a thorough repair by Nebuchadnezzar in about B C. 580. The curious fact was further elicited, that it was named the Temple of the Seven Spheres,' and that it had been laid out in confor. mity with the Chaldean Planetary System, seven Stages being erected, one above the other, accord. ing to the order of the seven planets, and their stages being coloured after the hue of the planets to which they were respectively dedicated. Thus the lower stage, belonging to Saturn, was black; the second, sacred to Jupiter, was orange; the third, or that of Mars, was red; the fourth, of the Sun, golden; the fifth, of Venus, white; the sixth, of Mercury, blue; and the seventh, of the Moon, a silvery green. In several cases these colours were still clearly to be distinguished, the appropriate hue being obtained by the quality and burning of the bricks; and it was thus ascertained that the vitrified masses at the summit were the result of design and not of accident,the sixth stage, sacred to Mercury, having been subjected to an intense and prolonged fire, in order to produce the blue slag colour, which was emblematical of that planet. It further ap. peared, that we were indebted to this peculiarity of construction for the preservation of the monument, when so many of its sister temples had utterly perished, the blue slag cap at the summit of the pile resisting the action of the weather, and holding together the lower stages, which would otherwise have crumbled, while it also afforded an immovable pedestal for the upper stage and for the shrine which probably crowned the pile. The only other point of interest which was ascertained from the cylinders was, that the temple in question did not belong to Babylon, but to the neighbouring city of Borsippa,-the title of Birs, by which it is now known, being a mere abbreviation of the ancient name of the city." Col. Rawlinson in his lecture told very simply, but with great effect, what would have astonished ourselves as well as the Arabs, how he told the Arab to make a hole in the wall, put in his hand, and take out the baked cylinders! It did look like magic. But what magic is so wonderful as that of science! We shall conclude with two more extracts, The first seems unquestionably to prove a CONFIRMATION OF THE HISTORY OF NEBUCHADNEZZAR.-DAN. iv. 30-37. tolerable preservation, contrasting so favourably with the shapeless heaps in the neighbourhood, had very generally suggested the identity of the ruin with the temple of Belus, so minutely described by Herodotus, and as there were large vitrified masses of brickwork on the summit of the mound, which presented the appearance of having been subjected to the influence of intense heat, conjectures that the Birs might even represent the ruins of the tower of Babel, destroyed by lightning from heaven, had not been unfrequently hazarded and believed. To resolve the many interesting questions connected with this ruin, Col. Rawlinson undertook last au. tumn its systematic examination. Experimental trenches were opened in vertical lines from the summit to the base, and wherever walls were met with they were laid bare by horizontal galleries being run along them. After two months of preliminary excavation, Col. Rawlinson visited the works, and profiting by the experience acquired in his previous researches, he was able in the course of half-an-hour's examination to detect the spots where the commemorative records were deposited, and to extract, to the utter astonishment of the Arabs, from concealed cavities in the wails, the two large inscribed cylinders of baked clay which were exhibited to the meeting, and which were now in as fine a state of preservation as when they were deposit-markable passage of the India House inscription, ed in their hiding place by Nebuchadnezzar above twenty-five centuries ago. From these cylinders it appeared that the temple had been originally built by the king Merodach-adan-akhi at the close of the twelfth century B.C., and pro. bably in celebration of his victory over Tiglath. Pileser I; that it had subsequently fallen into ruin, and had been in consequence subjected to "The famous slab of Nebuchadnezzar which is deposited in the Museum of the India House, contained a description of the various works exe. cuted by Nebuchadnezzar at Babylon and Borsippa, which so nearly corresponded with the account of Berosus quoted by Josephus, that it would hardly be doubted the Chaldee historian had consulted the original autographic record: and here was introduced the notice of a most re which seemed to contain the official version adopted by the king of that terrible calamity which overtook him in the midst of his career. Abruptly breaking off from the narrative of the architectural decoration of Babylon, the inscription denounced the Chaldean astrologers; the king's heart was hardened against them; he would grant no benefactions for religious pur poses; he intermitted the worship of Merodach, and put an end to the sacrifice of victims: he laboured under the effects of enchantment (?) There is much that is extremely obscure in this episodical fragment; but it really seemed to allude to the temporary insanity of the monarch, and at its close, when the spell was broken which had been cast over him, the thread of the argument, having reference to the building of Baby. lon, was resumed." CONFIRMATION OF THE HISTORY OF BEL SHAZZAR.-DANIEL V. "After a brief notice of Nebuchadnezzar's successors, Evil Merodach, and Nergal-shar-ezer (Neriglissor of the Greeks), Col. Rawlinson pro. ceeded to explain his last discovery of importance, which established the fact of the eldest son of Nabonidus having been named Belshar-ezer, and that pointed the way to the reconcilement of profane and sacred history in regard to the capture of Babylon by Cyrus. Relics of Nabonidus, the last king of Babylon, abounded, not only at Babylon and Borsippa, but in Southern Chaldea also. From the ruins of a temple to "the Moon," which had been recently excavated at "Ur of the Chaldees," four perfect cylinders of this king had been recovered, which were now placed on the table, together with the fragments of a hollow barrel cylinder of the same period. The latter relic contained a detailed account of the various works of Nabonidus throughout the empire, and was particularly valuable in men. tioning the monarchs who founded and repaired the temples in the different capitals, and in establishing their chronological succession. The four smaller cylinders, which all bore the same inscription, referred particularly to the history of the temple of the Moon' at Ur of the Chaldees. In both legends the architectural description was finished with a special prayer and invocation for the welfare of the king's eldest son, Belshar-ezer; and as this substitution of the name of the king's son for that of the king himself was an isolated example, and totally at variance with ancient usage, the only reasonable sus; explanation seemed to be that Belshar-ezer (ab. breviated in Daniel to Belshazzar, as Nergal-sharezer was shortened by the Greeks to Neriglissor) had been raised by the king during his life-time to a participation in the imperial dignity. On the supposition then-that there were two kings reigning at the same time in Babylon-it could well be understood that Nabonidus, the father, may have met the Persians in the open field, and after his defeat may have thrown himself into the stronghold of Borshippa, as stated by Berowhile Belshazzar, the son, may have awaited the attack of the enemy in Babylon, and have fallen under that awful visitation of the divine vengeance which is described in the book of Daniel. That the eldest son of Nabonidus, indeed, who is distinctly named Bel-shar-ezer in the cylinders of Mugheir, could not have sur. vived the extinction of the empire, is rendered certain by the fact, that when a revolt of the Babylonians took place at the commencement of the reign of Darius Hystaspes, the impostor who personated the heir to the kingdom, and called his countrymen to arms, assumed the name of 'Nabukudruchur, the son of Nabunit' (see inscription of Behistun), the rights of the eldest son having descended to the second. As the cylinders exhibited to the meeting were the only solitary documents on which the name of Belshazzar had been ever found, apart from the pages of Daniel, they were objects of special interest, and would no doubt be reckoned among the choicest treasures of the British Museum.' The following fact is extremely curious : MATHEMATICAL CUBE. "The only other object of interest was a small cube of ivory, bearing on it certain mathematical tables, which were inscribed, however, in a character so minute, as to be almost invisible until examined with a strong magnifying glass; and it was suggested that from this specimen alone we might reasonably believe the Assyrians to have been in the habit of manufacturing lenses, and to have been thus considerably advanced in a knowledge of the science of optics!" Religious and Missionary Entelligence. THE GLASGOW MISSION TO SCUTARI. BOOKS FOR THE SOLDIERS. We promised our readers to insert the following list of the books sent to Scutari, through the Glasgow Mission, as reported by our Chaplain, Mr. Macnair. Since his letter was written, the last box, sent from his late parishioners in Greenock, containing also a communion cup, has arrived safely at its destination, so that every gift to the Hospital, made through our Chaplains, is now accounted for. "Scutari, Sept. 5, 1855. "My dear Sir,- It gives me much pleasure to acknowledge yours of the 22d ult., received this morning. I will try and give as succinct a reply as I can, though I am not sure that at this moment it will be in my power to give a complete list of all the books and tracts which have been sent to the Presbyterian chaplains, on behalf of the Mission to Scutari. With regard to those sent to the care of Mr. Fergusson or myself, I am happy to be able now to state that, so far as we know, no books have gone amissing; that every box shipped from Britain to our care has either reached in safety, or has been sent |