When Rawlinson returned from Bagdad in 1855, he was appointed a Director of the East India Company, and he entered Parliament as Member for Reigate. In 1859 he went to Persia as British envoy, a position from which he retired in the following year. After his resignation, he devoted himself for some years almost exclusively to his old cuneiform pursuits. He undertook to supervise the publication of the ‘Inscriptions of Western Asia,’ and he might be found at work upon them daily at the British Museum. Mr. George Smith was appointed his working assistant, and in that position he gained the intimate knowledge of the Assyrian language which he afterwards turned to such excellent account. The first volume of the Inscriptions appeared in 1859, and the last, or fifth, in 1884.[895] Rawlinson entered Parliament once more in 1865, as Member for Frome, but retired on his re-appointment to the India Office in 1868. He fell a victim to influenza in 1895, at the age of eighty-five. During his life he was gradually overwhelmed with honours bestowed upon him by learned Societies in various quarters of the globe;[896] but a grateful country was long reluctant to confer its seal of recognition. Military authorities are naturally unwilling to acknowledge the merits of distinguished officers who descend to civil employments; and in 1851, after the publication of the Behistun inscription, he had to sue in somewhat humble terms for promotion to the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel. On his return from Bagdad in 1855, when the walls of the Museum were lined with the trophies he had accumulated and the country was enraptured with the new arcana of knowledge his genius had unveiled, Lord Clarendon thought a knighthood worthy of his acceptance. This he hastened to decline, and shortly afterwards he received the more appropriate honour of K.C.B. (1856). The dignities to which he subsequently rose were due to political services and social position, and seem to have been entirely unconnected with the achievements we have recounted.