We have now come to the time when the enterprise of individual travellers was about to be superseded by commissioners sent by foreign Governments to collect information in an official capacity. We cannot say that the general reader has cause to be thankful. We now part company with the modest volume that could be purchased and handled with comparative ease. In its place we have massive folios, which an enterprising student may indeed find in the ‘large room’ of the British Museum, but which are beyond the power of a private library to acquire. No one untainted by African gold could contemplate their possession, and indeed it would be necessary to build an addition to an ordinary house to find them accommodation. They are not adapted for study, for they tax too severely the physical endurance of the reader. The writer who is employed to fill in the blanks between the magnificent illustrations, is probably sensible of this, and one of them, M. Flandin, afterwards republished his text in a more convenient form. These vast folios are designed, we should think, mainly for the glorification of the Government who has paid for them, and for the benefit of the various mechanical persons employed in their fabrication. Sumptuously bound in red morocco, with richly gilt edges, they serve only to be rolled into the room of a palace in order that the pretty pictures that adorn them may be idly scanned amid the chatter of a tea-table. The first of these great compilations that comes under our notice was made by Charles Texier, who had already gained fame and experience by his ‘Description de l’Asie Mineure,’ published between 1838-48. He was a Government Inspector of Public Works, and he subsequently became Professor of Archæology at the Collège de France (1840). He obtained a grant of 160,000 francs to enable him to publish his book, a sum afterwards reduced to 100,000. He does not seem to have regarded this measure with as much satisfaction as the reader, for he was compelled upon this occasion to restrict his publication to only two folios; and he complains that he had to suppress a considerable portion of his vast collections. In 1839 he set out for Persia, and the account of his travels was published by instalments between the years 1842 and 1852. In 1849 very few of the plates referring to Persepolis had appeared, and no text,[167] but Fergusson was able to use a considerable part of the drawings, in 1850, for his ‘Nineveh and Persepolis.’ Texier set out upon his enterprise, as Porter had done before, with a desire to aim at the most scrupulous accuracy; but his fatal passion for ‘restorations’ has made sad havoc of his moral aspirations.