Layard’s whole life was one long romance. He was endowed with a vivid imagination, which probably came from his mixed descent, for his mother was a Spanish lady and his father an Englishman. As a young man, Layard was set to studying law, but instead of attaining great legal honours, he was made a baronet for wielding pick and spade to such good purpose out in Mesopotamia, that he dug up more knowledge of the past than any one man before or since. Layard in his teens read the _Arabian Nights_ with avidity. All the colour, the romance of the East appealed to his mind. He dreamed dreams of bazaars and eastern palaces, with veiled ladies and their lovers. While he dreamed these dreams he was compelled to study musty legal documents, in which he took not the slightest interest. Being confined in an office he hated, his great desire was to see the scenes he had read and dreamed about. Yet there was no escape for him. His father had chosen the law for him as a profession, and he continued his studies against his own inclinations. Working in his uncle’s office, Layard was not much impressed by the imagination or the generosity of his relative. Often when the lawyer thought his nephew was studying in his room, Layard was chatting with refugees, listening eagerly to their tales, and filling his rooms with the smell of fried sprats. His eagerness to travel and see the world was not wholly unsatisfied. He visited the Continent once or twice with a wealthy friend and saw much. There came a day when he made up his mind to see the land of the Tsars. He counted up his money. It was little enough, but by exercising strict economy he decided he might just manage to obtain another glimpse of the world. So he set out practically on the spur of the moment, and made his first acquaintance with Russia and Scandinavia. This adventurous young fellow was born with the desire to wander and see new lands and peoples. To a youth of his temperament, an office was a prison. While he was poring over his law-books, the figures of the _Arabian Nights_ were flitting through his brain. His whole life was practically influenced by these tales of the East. “To them,” he wrote, “I attribute that love of travel and adventure which took me to the East, and led me to the discovery of the ruins of Nineveh. They give the truest, most lively and most interesting pictures of manners and customs which still existed amongst Turks, Persians and Arabs when I first mixed freely with them.” Despite this overwhelming desire to travel, he grappled with his legal studies, and managed to pass his final examination. At that time his uncle arrived home from Ceylon, and it may be imagined how delightedly the young man listened to accounts of life in that far-off island. With his usual impetuosity he determined to go to Ceylon, to take up the profession he had studied.