We now leap over more than four eventful years. Mr. LAYARD is about to exchange the often anxious but always glorious toils of the successful archæologist, for the not less anxious and very often exceedingly inglorious toils of the politician. He will also henceforth have to exchange many a pleasant morning ride and many a peaceful evening ‘tobacco-parliament’ with Arabs of the Desert, for turbulent discussions with metropolitan electors, and humble obeisances in order to win their sweet voices. Just before he leaves Mósul come some new unearthings of Assyrian sculpture, to add to the welcome tidings he will carry into England. [Sidenote: THE DISCOVERIES AT KOUYUNJIK OF THE SPRING OF 1851.] He found, he tells us—in one of the closing chapters of his latest book—that to the north of the great centre-hall four new chambers, full of sculpture, had been discovered. On the walls of a grand gallery, ninety-six feet by twenty-three, was represented the return of an Assyrian army from a campaign in which they had won loads of spoil and a long array of prisoners. The captured fighting men wore a sort of Phrygian bonnet reversed, short tunics, and broad belts. The women had long tresses and fringed robes. [Sidenote: _Discoveries at Nineveh and Babylon_ (edit. 1853), pp. 582–584.] Sometimes they rode on mules or were drawn—by men as well as by mules—in chariots. The captives were the men and women of Susiana. The victor was SENNACHERIB. In several subsequent years—1853, 1854, 1855, when most Englishmen were intently acting, or beholding with suspended breath, the great drama in the Crimea—a famous compatriot was continuing the task so nobly initiated by Austen LAYARD. Sir Henry RAWLINSON (made by this time Consul-General at Baghdad) carried on new excavations, both at Nimroud and at Kouyunjik. In these he was ably assisted by Mr. W. K. LOFTUS, as well as by Mr. Hormuzd RASSAM, the helper and early friend of LAYARD, and (in the later stages) by Mr. TAYLOR. Another obelisk, with portions of a third and fourth; thirty-four slabs sculptured in low-relief; one statue in the round; and a multitude of smaller objects, illustrating with wonderful diversity and minuteness the manners and customs, the modes of life and of thought, as well as the wars and conquests, the luxury and the cruelty, of the old Assyrians, were among the treasures which, by the collective labour of these distinguished explorers, were sent into Britain. [Sidenote: EARLY LABOURERS ON THE DECIPHERING OF CUNEIFORM INSCRIPTIONS.] Another ‘recension,’ so to speak, of the early Annals of SENNACHERIB, King of Assyria, inscribed upon a cylinder, was not the least interesting of the monuments found under the direction of Sir Henry RAWLINSON, whose name had already won its station—many years before his consulship at Baghdad—beside those of GROTEFEND, of BURNOUF and of LASSEN, in the roll of those scientific investigators by whose closet labours the researches and long gropings of the RICHES, the