_ai_ and _ia_; but neither of his signs for _ai_ is correct: one has, in fact, the value of _tir_. It may be said in conclusion that on all points of difference between Rawlinson and De Saulcy, both as regards the theory of the language and the details of its expression, Rawlinson was right and De Saulcy hopelessly wrong. De Saulcy was not only unable to teach Rawlinson anything, but, as we have already observed, he was incapable to a very remarkable degree of apprehending the truth from others. He lived for many years afterwards, but his Essay on the Behistun inscription seems to have been the last occasion on which he meddled with cuneiform studies. He probably recognised more clearly than some of his admirers how incompetent he was to make any useful contribution to the subject. It is impossible to refrain from sympathy with him. He tells us he spent a whole year in ‘comparing sign by sign and transcribing all the Achaemenian texts without exception.’[860] Nothing is more calculated to overwhelm the mind with despondency than to pass years of fruitless toil amid such arid wastes as these and to discover in the end that the natural ability to make useful application of the knowledge acquired is wholly wanting. For the true genius of a decipherer is a rare gift, and no amount of industry or learning can compensate for its absence. Hincks and Rawlinson possessed it with exceptional intensity. Many of the other scholars whose labours we have reviewed were endowed to a less degree—Grotefend, Jacquet and Lassen. Even Longpérier, in the few lines he contributed to the subject evinced no little aptitude in this direction; but De Saulcy was singularly deficient in the special qualifications it required. It would have been more worthy of the position he occupied in other departments of study if he could have restrained the irritation that the consciousness of the waste of so much effort could not fail to produce. It was lamentable that he should fretfully pretend to have anticipated the discoveries of Rawlinson, or that he should have presented his own crude performance as a possible rival to his. It would almost seem, from the extreme rarity of his pamphlets, that he endeavoured to suppress the evidence of his failure, and it would be well if his countrymen were to allow his work in this department to pass out of the reach of farther controversy.