The Sun.
London, England, 1851-01-09 00:00:00

MILD JEAN'S " FIRt,-KINDLING."

In the esoat, of Abergeldie there lives an eld woman,
generally known by the name of Auld Jean. Her
Maj,sty one day, in passing, did not tail to notice
the strange appearance of the building, which looked
more like a potato-pit than a house, from the many
coatings of divot which bad been laid on, and which
bad become green and grassy. Her Majesty entered
the hut, which was only composed of one roam, which
was to Jean kitchen, parlour, bedroom, and laundry,
and upon seeing the bad state of repair the house was
in, conde.cendingly offered to build her a more com-
fortable and substantial house, substituting stone and
lime in place of stone and turf, to which Joan replied,
in her ain flielao' dialect, " Ni, na, am no seekin' a
new house ; a whi.e house widna dee wi' me. I
think, an' I had the ane I hae sortit, I would be
braw enough?' Consequently, to please the poor
old woman, her Majesty gave orders to her commis-
sioner to get the house comfortably repaired ; and,
before leaving her Highland re.eidence, her Majesty
went to bid Jean farewell, but did not forget to
bring with her many of the necessaries of life and
comfort which winter in the Highlands of Scotland
require. And, in obedience to her Majesty's command,
the repairing of the house was commenced, hut
upon taking down the roof, it was found to need
all the requisites of a Highlandinan's gun, which
caused it to be turn-d out to the foundation, and a
neat little cottage built in its place. It is now a
comfortable home for Jean. Her lurniture being
scarce, and so acted upon by soot, smoke, and old
age, that one would think that it had undergone the
thorough process of jipanning, an offer was made to
Jean to make it all new, but Jean replied—" A wow,
weet swat no; I widna want my bed aye, for it was
made afore. Calluden, an' three protty lords sleepit
in't fen they wai comin' hame." Jean's house being
now finished, a number of her neighbours met on the
17th ult., to celebrate what is called in the Highlands
of Scotland, the " fire-kindling" of Jean's new house.
At eight o'clock, the beaux with their belles were to
be seen, neatly .attired, rapidly progressing towards
the place of rendezvous, headed by Mr. W. Blair,
musician, to whom 'praise is due for the very able
manner in which he performed on his violin. After
being well regaled with mulled porter and a fair sup-
ply of Farquharson's celebrated new Lochnagar, the
following toasts were given :—" Her Alsjosty the
Queen, and his Royal Highness the Prince of Wales;"
" Prince Albert, and all the rest of the Royal
Family ;" " Her Royal Highness the Duchess of
Rent," " Lord Portman, Lady Portman, and
Family ;"" A. Robertson, Esq., Indego -" and " Auld
Jean." The old woman and her brother danced at
the ball—the one aged eighty-
seven, and the other
eighty-four years.—Aberdeen Herald.

_ -
DR. LAAARD AND NINEVEH.
(From Bentley's Miscellany for January.)
-Maim " Niaeveh and its Remaina"
was published two
years ago, the very title of the work was certain to
excite the utmost curiosity, but the disclosures con-
tained in it far exceeded all the imagination could
have conceived. That a city, originally built, as we
are informed in the Scriptures (Genesis v , and
12 verses), by one of the early descendants.of Noah
—a city, which for countless, or at least unknown,
ages, had vanished from the face of the earth, so that
Lot one memorial or authentic record of the manners
and customs of its inlebitants had been preserved—
that ancient Nineveh should have been, as it were,
called up to pass before the eyes of mortals of the
ninetieth century, was an event calculated to beget
the utmost interest and astonishment. That so mar-
vellous a work should have been performed by the
enterprise, perseverance, and genius of a single un-
assisted man, was not the least surprising circum-
stance in the matter.
The city of Ninew h was the metropolis of the great
Assyrian empire, and there is abundant evidence to
prove that it was once the largest and most populous
city in the world. Whether Ninus, the builder or
restorer of that vast city, completed it bffore or after
the overthrow of Zoroaster, is uncertain. It is agreed
by all profane Arirers, and confirmed by the Scrip-
tures, that it exceeded all others in circuit and mag-
nificence; for it was in circuinfer, rice four hundred
and eighty stadia or furlongs ('ixty miles), the walls
being a hundred feet tegti, and so broad that three
chariots might be driven abreast on the ramplrt;.
These walls were adorned with fifteen hundred towers,
each two hundred fret nigh.
But this city, built in the plains of Assyria, on the
banks of the river Tigris, and in the region of Eden,
was founded long before the time of Ninus, and, as
ancient historians report, was called Campsor, until
Ninus amplified it and gave it the name of Nineveh. ,1
The Campsor, then, must have been founded by
As.shur, who, as we learn from Genesis, went forth
from the land of Shinar, and built Nineveh. Nothing
more concerning it, however, is told ih the sacred •

writings till the time of the prophet Jonah, who de-
scribes it as an " exceeding great city of three days'
journey." He also indicates its immense population,
saying that it contained " more than six score thou-
sand persons that could not discern between their
right hand aad their left hand." Supposing one-
sixth of the inhabitants of Nineveh to have been in
this deplorable state of ignorance, we have a popula-
tion more than seven hundred thousand in number.

The preaching of the prophet Jonah caused the
people of Nineveh to repent, and accordingly the city
was spared for a time : yet shortly afterwards Nahum
was commanded to declare the burden of Nineveh, to
proclaim the city's destruction, and to announce the
downfall of the Assyrian empire. This prophet
speaks of it as a city with many strongholds, and
many gates with bars ; that had multiplied her mer-
chants above the stars of heaven ; whose inhabitants
and princes were numerous as the locusts; and whose
store and glory of pleasant furniture was endless.
The destruction of the city, in the year B.c. 606,
by the combined armies of Cyaxares, King of Persia.
and Nabopolatsar, who was, asTr. Layard thinks, the
Assyrian governor of Babylon, fulfilled this predic-
tion to ;Ile very letter. Ni, eveh was laid waste; she
was indeed " made a desolation, and dry like a wil-

lerness."

We learn from Diodorus Siculus that the city was
destroyed partly by water and partly by fire, and th,t
many talents of gold and silver rescued from the
flames were carried to Ecbatan. Lucian of Samosata
who flourished about A. D. 180, informs us that Ni-
neveh had perished utterly—that not a vestige of the
city remained, and that even the place where it stood
was no longer known.
We take it for granted that all our readers, having
inspected the extraordinary sculptures now in the
British Museum, or seen drawings from them, and
having formed a due estimate of the obligations this
country lies under to the discoverer, will have been
anxious long since, to know something of that re-
markable person, and such information we are
happy to be enabled, in part at least, to communicate.
Since the time of Lucian nearly seventeen centu-
ries have elapsed, and the name of Nineveh, until
lately, alone remained. Its very ruins were no longer
on the face of the land, and in this age of science and
inquiry no antiquarian before Dr. Layard ever se-
riously bethought himself of seeking out the Nineveh
and Babylon of Holy Writ, and of searching for the
buried palaces of the Assyrian monarchy. True it
is, that the notice of travellers in Assyria had been
attracted long ago to huge mounds, apparently com-
posed of earth and rubbish, and that it was conjec-
tured that these were the remains of the stupendous
capitals—Nineveh and Babylon. A mass of brick-
work, vitrified and rising out of the aggregated rub-
bi.ll of centuries, was believed to be the remains of
the tower of Babel.

The Temple of Belus, according to Herodotus, and
some mounds in the neighbourhood, were supposed to
be the hanging gardens and marvellous structures
attributed to Semiramis, the wife of Ninus, who built
Babylon; but the difficulty of reaching those locali-
ties, while it excited the interest of the antiquarian,
prevented the traveller from visiting them.
Greater curiosity was awakened by the presumed
site of Nineveh than of Babylon. Several travellers
had noticed the numerous mounds on the left bank of
the Tigris, opposite the modern city of Mosul, and
what tradition had called the tomb of Jonab, on the
top of one of the mounds, gave a certain probability
to the conjecture that indiciated the site of Nineveh ;
but it is to Dr. Layard that we are indebted for a
knowledge of that important fact, confirmed as it is
by the extraordinary remains he has forwarded to this
country.
The Layards are descended from a distinguished
family, named Raymond, long settled in the south of
France, who claimed affinity with the Raymonds,
sovereign Counts of Toulouse; were among the earliest
supporters of the reformed religion in that country, and
espoused the cause of the persecuted Albigenses. The
Raymonds, nevertheless, continued to receive honours
and grants from successive sovereigns of France, in-
termarrying with the noblest families, until the mas-
sacre of the Huguenots, in 1572, when two of the
brothers fell victims in that terrible slaughter, whilst a
third (the heir) succeeded in effecting his escape into
Holland.

The immediate ancestor of the existing branch of
the Raymonds, or rather Layards, came over to this
country with William, Prince of Orange, and held a
high command under that Protestant prince at the
battle of the Boyne.

From that period the family definitively settled in
England. Having already embraced the Protestant
faitn, Raymond was content for its sake to give up
his country, and relinquish his property in France;
but, warned by the revocation of the edict of Nantes,
he dropped his patrimonial name, and assumed that
of Liyard, probably the name of an estate, as one of
the family was subsequently called Raymond de
Layarde ; destroying, at the same time, every docu-
ment which, preserved and transmitted to his descen-
dants, might tempt any one of them to return to
CithGaism, and enable him to recover the estates in
France.

This, the last of the Raytoonds, was the grand-
f4tber of Dr. Layard, the late Dean of Brintol, and
of his two brothers, both generals in the English
Erne.

The second son of the Dean of Bristol, Henry Peter
John, held for many years a high civil appointment
in Ceylon, was a man of great abilities and varied
acquirements, and was the father of Austen Henry
Layard, the subject of our present memoir, who was
born at Paris, during a temporary visit of his parents
to that metropolis, on the sth of March, 1817.
The early youth of Lsyard was passed at Florence.
Familiar with the language of Italy, it is no wonder
that the glorious literature of that country subse-
quently solicited his attention ; or that, born with a
love of the fine arts, his taste should have been en-
nobled and purified by a contemplation of the glorious
models of sculpture and painting in which Florence
abounds. Was it here that he acquired that command'
over his pencil, which he afterwards found infinitely
serviceable to him amid the ruins cf Nimroud? This