Austen Henry LAYARD is an Englishman, notwithstanding his birth in Paris (5th of March, 1817), and his descent from one of the many Huguenot families who (in one sense) do honour to France for their sufferings for conscience sake, and who (in many more senses than one) do honour to England by the way in which zealous and persevering exertions in the service of their adopted country have enabled them to pluck the flowers of fame, or of distinction, from amidst the sharp thorns of adversity. Austen LAYARD is the grandson of the honoured Dr. LAYARD, Dean of Bristol, and he began active life, whilst yet very young, in a solicitor’s office in the City of London. But he had scarcely reached twenty-two years of age before family circumstances enabled him to gratify a strong passion for Eastern travel. Archæology had no share, at first, in the attractions which the Levant presented to his youthful enterprise. But a fervid nature, a good education, and a wonderful power of self-adaptation to new social circumstances, made the mind of the young traveller a fitting seedplot for antiquarian knowledge, whenever the opportunity of acquiring it should come. [Sidenote: THE JOURNEY THROUGH ASIA MINOR AND SYRIA IN 1839–1840.] To a man of that stamp it would be impossible that he should tread near those ancient ruins, every stone of which must needs connect itself with some ‘reverend history’ or other—when the discerning eye should at length pore upon it and ponder it—without the ambition stirring within him to make at least an earnest attempt to explore and to decipher. To this particular man and his companion in travel, Fortune was propitious, by dint of her very parsimony. As he says himself: ‘No experienced dragoman measured our distances or appointed our stations. We were honoured with no conversations by pashas, nor did we seek any civilities from governors. We neither drew tears nor curses from the villagers by seizing their horses, or searching their houses for provisions; [Sidenote: _Nineveh and its Remains_ (1849), vol. i, p. 2.] their welcome was sincere; their scanty fare was placed before us; we ate, and came, and went in peace.’