It is a slight blemish in Mr. Layard’s otherwise admirable books that they are loose in the handling of dates. It is sometimes necessary to turn over hundreds of pages in order to be sure of the year in which a particular excavation was made, or in which an interesting incident occurred. Sometimes, again, there is an actual conflict of dates, _e. g._ _Discoveries in the Ruins_, &c. (1853), p. 3, ‘After my departure from Mósul in 1847,’ and again, p. 66, ‘On my return to Europe in 1847;’ but at p. 162, we read: ‘Having been carefully covered up with earth, previous to my departure in 1848, they [the lions] had been preserved,’ &c. I mention this simply because it is possible that error may thus, once or twice, have crept into the marginal dates given above, though pains has been taken about these. Footnote 40: The Berodach-Baladan of 2 Kings, xx, 12, who ‘sent letters and a present unto Hezekiah, when he had heard that Hezekiah had been sick.’ Footnote 41: And in which not a few readers will be sure to feel all the more interest, because of its sacred associations, when they call to mind those first-century travels of certain famous travellers who, ‘after they had passed throughout Pisidia, came to Pamphylia, and ... when they had gone through Phrygia, ... and were come to Mysia, assayed to go into Bythinia, but the Spirit suffered them not;’—having work for them to do in another quarter. Footnote 42: I shall not, I trust, be suspected of a want of gratitude for the eminent and most praiseworthy efforts of Mr. Davis—one of the many Americans who have returned, with liberal profuseness, the reciprocal obligations which _all_ Americans owe to Britain (for their ancestry, and also for the noble interchange of benefits between parent and offspring, prior to 1776; if for nought else), if I venture to remark that the above-written passage in the text has been inserted somewhat hesitatingly, as far as it concerns the _date_ of the Carthaginian explorations. No index; no summary; no marginal dates; conflicting and obscure dates, when any dates appear anywhere; no introduction, which introduces anything; scarcely any divarication of personal knowledge and experiences, from borrowed knowledge and experiences; such are some of the difficulties which await the student of _Carthage and her Remains_. Yet the book is full of deep interest; its author is, none the less, a benefactor to Britain, and to the world. Footnote 43: These were given to the Museum by Lord Russell, as Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. Lord Russell was one of the earliest of the Foreign Secretaries who began a new epoch, in this department of public duty, by setting new official precedents of regard and forethought for the augmentation of the national collections. Footnote 44: Meaning Lord Shelburne. See, heretofore, pp. 431–433. Footnote 45: