Else, the more diligent his excavations, the more destructive they would have been of the very end he had in view. LAYARD was at Constantinople when the news came of M. BOTTA’S increasing successes. His detention there had been unexpected, as well as unavoidable. But he wrote to England without delay. He had a foresight that BOTTA would not lack encouragement in France. He felt no unworthy jealousy on account of the fact that it was a Frenchman who was now disinterring historic treasures of a hitherto unexampled kind, and who was rapidly securing historic fame for himself.[38] Mr. LAYARD knew—few men just then knew more fully—that in all matters of learning and of discovery the gains of France are the gains of the world. [Sidenote: LAYARD’S OVERTURES TO THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT.] For the staunchest of John Bulls amongst us must acknowledge that in the arts of scientific dissemination and exposition a Frenchman (other things being equal) has usually twice the expertness of an Englishman. But he was naturally desirous that France should not have _all_ the glory of Assyrian discovery. What, then, was the reception with which his first overtures were met? ‘With a single exception,’ in the person of his London correspondent, ‘no one,’ he tells us, ‘in England’ ... [Sidenote: _Nineveh and its Remains_, vol. i, p. 10.] ‘seemed inclined to assist or take any interest in such an undertaking.’ What, on the other hand, were the encouragements given to the French explorer by the Government and the Nation of France? They were large; they were ungrudgingly given; and they were instantaneously sent. In Mr. LAYARD’S words: ‘The recommendation was attended to with that readiness and munificence which [has] almost invariably distinguished the French Government in undertakings of this nature. [Sidenote: LIBERAL AID EXTENDED TO M. BOTTA BY THE FRENCH GOVERNMENT.] Ample funds to meet the cost of extensive excavations were at once assigned to M. BOTTA, and an artist of acknowledged skill was placed under his orders, to draw such parts of the monuments discovered as could not be preserved or removed.’ Who will wonder that at first it seemed as though France would carry off all the stakes, and England have no place at all in the archæological race? [Sidenote: CONTRASTS:—ENGLAND AND FRANCE.] Mr. LAYARD, however, was otherwise minded. And he found, presently, a powerful helper in the person of the British Ambassador at Constantinople, Sir Stratford CANNING (now Lord Stratford de Redcliffe). Had it not been for the union, in that ambassador, of a large intellect, a liberal mind, and a strong will, and also for the _absence_, in him, of that shrinking from extra-official responsibilities which in so many able men has often emasculated their ability, Mr. LAYARD’S efforts, earnest and unremitting as they were, would assuredly have been foiled.