have long formed the subject of animated controversies; but it was not before the year 1842 that any serious attempt was made to penetrate beneath the grass that covered them. In this year M. Botta, the French consul at Mosul, made some insignificant opening, but without discovering any remarkable remains; and rumours having reached him from Khorsabad, a few miles off, of some remains there, he caused some vigorous excavations to be made there, and, aided by his government, contrived to lodge an excellent collection of Assyrian sculptures in the Louvre. About this time Mr. Layard was travelling through the Turkish Asiatic provinces; and in the course of his wanderings paid considerable attention to the mounds situated at Nimroud and near Mosul. Convinced that under these hillocks lay precious relics of antiquity, he procured an official letter to the Pasha of Mosul, and in 1845 repaired to Nimroud, and hired Arabs to make excavations in the mounds there. Even the first day's search disclosed valuable slabs ornamented with bas-reliefs and inscriptions in the cuneiform character, of the remotest antiquity, dating so far back as nineteen centuries before our era, and conjectured to be part of the ruins of the chief palace of Nimroud, destroyed about twelve centuries before our era. If so, this point was the original centre of the great city of Nineveh--that part said to have been built by Asshur; while the surrounding mounds of Mosul, Khorsabad, and Kouyunjik, cover ruins of a later date. Of Mr. Layard's discoveries in Assyria, that room, which the visitor should now enter (called the NIMROUD ROOM), is full. The room, as the visitor will at once perceive, is divided into eleven compartments--the first being that to the left on entering. Here he will begin his inspection of ANCIENT ASSYRIAN SCULPTURE.