The Republican., 1894-08-23
AN ADVENTURER OF RENoWN.
SIR Henry Layard Was Helped TO Dipio-
matte Career by His Daring.

S3r Henry Layard Was Helped to Dipio-
matte Career by His Daring.
Sir Henry Layard might be quoted as
aweXample of the truth OF Gordon's
saying that England has been made by
her adventurers. Using the word in
the honorable old sense. and not with
the ugly invidious meaning which has
come to attach to it, he was an adj
venturer that is to say, man who
picked out piece of work to be done
of his own motion and by his own
efforts. with means which he either
supplied himself or obtained by per-
sonal influence over others. 1t is true
that he had parliamentary and a
diplomatic career. but he would have
had neither if he had not first earned
distinction by his own efforts as an ex-
plorer. Something of the adventurous
disposition remained with him through
out.
1t prompted him to witness the bat
tie of the Alma from the maintop of the
Agamemnon. and was. perhaps. not
without its influence on hi1a during his
tenure of the Embassy at Constanti-
nople. Sir II. Layard will. however.
not be remembered either because he
was for few years a member of the
house of commons or because of his
services as ambassador at Canstanti-
nople at time of crisis. Between the
lncorrigible faction of Mr.. Gladstone
apd the equally incorrigible corrupt
"A yfefs the pashas, which he may not
have estimated at their true. stupid
worthlessness, and could in no case
control. the policy he endeavored TO
help Lord Beaconsfield to carry out had
no chance of success. In the earlier
part of his life Sir Henry Layard had
fortunately had opportunities of doing
work which neither English otticeseell-
ers nor Turkish pashas could spoil.
We have observed. with what is po-
lite to call surprise. that the leading
Gladstonian paper is of the opinion
that the honorable degree conferred on
Sir II. Layard in 1S4S by the university
of Oxford was given for some mysteri
ous reason. 1t may appear mysterious
to the curiously constituted GladSton-
ian mind that the university did not
foresee that Sir Henry would fall out
with Mr.. Gladstone thirty years later, or
even did not consider the possibility of
such an event as supplying a sufficient
reason for declining to confer a we'll
merited honor. To most people it will
seem self-evident that the honorary de
gree of 1S4s was very rightly given for
the voluntary services to learning of
1915. At that period the exploration of
the sources of the history of the east
was a comparatively new and very i'm
portant branch Of scholarship.
In one very interesting and valuable
part )f it England would not have
taken any adequate part but for the
voluntary enterprise of Layard. The
Manchester school. and the prevalence
of the feeling which dictated the we'll
known explosion, damn the Fine
Arts would have combined to prevent
the English government from giving
the help which was freely rendered to
French scholars by their own country.
During a visit to MeSul Layard had
seen that exploration of the mound Of
Nimroud, already begun by NJ. Botta,
| would yield valuable results. lie OBJ
tanned the means of excavation by the
| help of Sir Stratford Canning, and the
result of his excavations was to put
English scholarship beyond the risk of
having to envy the success of French
research in that field.
Whatever could be done by official
neglect to waste the gains due to his
labors was not omitted. The great
winged figures and the highly interest
ing bas-reliefs We're ill-packed and ill
carried. Many of the smaller objects
were, as it would seem. almost delib-
erately subjected to pilfering, and some
of the best OF them accordingly disap-
peared. But the energy of Sir Henry
Layard bore down even official inertia,
and the sculptures from the Assyrian
palaces finally took their proper place
in the British Museum.
| Sir Henry wrote very well, as is
known by those who have read his
account Of his explorations at Nineveh,
and the more recently published narra-
tive of his early travels in Armenia and
Kurdistan The facts that he was the
son of an Indian civil servant, was half
a Spaniard by blood, and an Indian by
education. must be allowed for as tit-
ting him for the kind of work he had
to do by giving him an understanding
of foreign and Oriental peoples which
a more purely bred Englishman might
not have had. But the energy to use
these advantages was all his own
London Review.