NOTICES OF BOOKS. 1. Infidelity its Causes and Cure. By the Rev. David Nel- 2. The Eclipse of Faith; or, a Visit to a Religious Sceptic. On Rheumatism, Rheumatic Gout, and Sciatica: their Patho- logy, Symptoms, and Treatment. By H. W. Fuller, M.D., The Poetical Remains of Peter John Allan, Esq., late of Frede- ricton, New Brunswick. With a short Biographical Notice. Edited by the Rev. Henry Christmas, M.A., F.R.S., F.S.A., The Principles of French Grammar; with Numerous Exercises, The Philosophy of Atheism examined and compared with Christianity. A Course of Popular Lectures delivered at the Mechanics' Institute, Bradford. By the Rev. B. Godwin, D.D. 482 A Collection of Aquatic Birds at Santry House, near Dublin The Life and Death of Silas Barnstarke: a Story of the Seven- teenth Century. By Talbot Gwynne The Herb of the Field. By the Author of "The Kings of Eng- land," "Langley School," "Scenes and Characters," &c. A Biblical Dictionary; being a Comprehensive Digest of the the Sacred Writings. With Pronouncing and Chronological Appendices. By the Rev. J. A. Bastow The late Revolution in Prussia in Relation to the University and History of the Insurrection in China; with Notices of the Chris- tianity, Creed, and Proclamations of the Insurgents. By Mm. Callery and Yvan. Translated from the French, with a Supplementary Chapter, Narrating the Most Recent Events, by John Oxenford. With a Map and Portrait of Tien-Te Family Prayers. By W. Hastings Kelke, B.A., Rector of Dray- The Pantropheon; or, the History of Food. By A. Soyer The Seven Seals Broken Open; or, the Bible of the Reformation Re- formed. By John Finch, Merchant, Liverpool. Memoir of the Rev. W. H. Hewitson, late Minister of the Free The Jesuits: an Historical Sketch. By E. W. Grenfield, M.A. 498 Memoirs of Scipio de Ricci, late Bishop of Pistoia and Prato, The Ansyreeh and Ismalech: a Visit to the Secret Sects of Northern Syria; with a view to the Establishment of Schools. By the Rev. Samuel Lyde, B.A., Fellow of Jesus College The English Humourists of the Eighteenth Century: a Series Sunday and the Sabbath; or, Reasons for Identifying the Lord's Day of the Apostles with the Sabbath of Moses. By William THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND Quarterly Review. JULY, MDCCCLIII. ART. I.-Discoveries in the Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon; with Travels in Armenia, Kurdistan, and the Desert: being the Result of a Second Expedition undertaken for the Trusters of the British Museum. By AUSTEN H. LAYARD, M.P., with Maps, Plans, and Illustrations. London: Murray. 1853. WHEN the first article in our last number was written, we had not seen Mr. Layard's work and we think that it was not then published; and it gives us the opportunity of strengthening our argument in favour of the antiquity of the square Hebrew letters, and of the simultaneous use of "ragged, broken, or irregular writing," for all secular purposes-this being the necessary inference from the discoveries which have been made among the ruins of Babylon. Our argument was that the art of writing surpasses human ingenuity and that it was of divine revelation-that it was shown to be not unworthy of God by His condescending to write the law on the tables of stone-and that the invention is virtually disclaimed by man in that all nations who have an alphabet acknowledge from whence they have received it or ascribe the invention to a god; and that many nations, VOL. XXXIV.-B like the Mexicans and Peruvians, had made great advances in civilization, and yet had not been able to invent an alphabet. We also asserted, as a dictate of common sense, that a revelation coming from God was perfect in its kind—that God did not reveal a rude character, leaving it to man to improve upon the revelation—and as the square Hebrew is confessedly the most perfect form of writing that language, and all alphabets used in other languages can be traced back to the Hebrew, we inferred that the square Hebrew was the character originally revealed to man, The arguments opposed to this view are-first, the assertion of Jerome, which became current in the Church, that the Jews brought the square characters out of Babylon: secondly, the assertion of Walton, in his prolegomena, that coins are extant of the age of Solomon, the inscriptions on which are in the "ragged" or Samaritan character, proving that the latter was the character the whole nation used before the falling away of the ten tribes, in the reign of Rehoboam, the son of Solomon. This last argument no well-informed person would now have recourse to; but as the name of Brian Walton still carries weight, and justly so with many who do not go into the grounds of his argument, we think it worth while to point out his mistake in this particular. The inscriptions on the coins in question are in the irregular characters, very similar to the Samaritan. Walton, assuming that the square Hebrew was brought up from Babylon by Ezra, inferred from the writing that these coins were struck before the captivity. And as on one side was written, “Sheckel of Israel," and on the other “Jerusalem the Holy," he also argued that they must have been struck before the revolt of the ten tribes and when all Israel worshipped at Jerusalem. But some of the coins on which Walton relied were counterfeit, and those which were genuine are now known to be of the time of the Maccabees. So that these very coins turn the tables against Walton; for, as he assumes that the square Hebrew has existed unchanged from the time of Ezra, these coins prove that another character was in common use at the same time, which every one who has eyes can see is a corruption; and, therefore, is the demotic or vulgar, as opposed to the sacred. And we are now in a position to be able to assert, with considerable confidence, that neither the one nor the other of these forms of writing was learned by the Jews in Babylon. The investigations hitherto made among the ruins of Babylon have not furnished a single monument in that character which we should expect to find everywhere, if it were true that the Jews acquired it in Babylon. On the contrary, all the inscriptions are in the arrow-he. ded character, not only during the time of the Babylonian ascendancy, but during the Persian rule, when Syriac and Greek letters came into use; and inscriptions by the Jews have recently been brought to light which are not in accordance with the letters on the Maccabean coins, and differ still more widely from the square or sacred character, of which Mr. Ellis gives the following account in the volume now before us : "A discovery relating to the Jews of the captivity in Babylon, and consequently of great interest to Oriental scholars, and especially to Biblical students, was made by Mr. Layard during his second expedition to Assyria. Amongst the various curious objects found on the banks of the Euphrates, and in the ruins of ancient Babylonia, were several bowls or cups of terracotta, round the inner surface of which were inscriptions in the ancient Chaldæan language, written in characters wholly unknown, and I believe never before seen in Europe. The letters appear to be an admixture of the Syriac and Palmyrene, and in some instances resemble the ancient Phoenician. The subjects of the inscriptions are amulets or charms against evil spirits, diseases, and every kind of misfortune. They must have been written long prior to any existing manuscripts of the ancient Hebrew and Chaldæan languages that we now know of, there being no divisions between the words, nor are there any vowel points. But the most remarkable circumstance connected with these inscriptions is, that the characters used on the bowl, No. 1, answer precisely to the description of the most ancient Hebrew letters given in the Babylonian Talmud, which contains an account of the nature and origin of the letters used by the Jews. In the tract Sanhedrin, we are told that the Jews called their characters Assyrian, and that they were brought with them from Assyria. Abraham de Balmis, in his Hebrew grammar, states that the characters called Assyrian were composed of straight lines (Jasheroth)-Quia est recta et exivit nobiscum ex Assyria (Ashuroth)" (510). In endeavouring to form an opinion concerning the time when these inscriptions were written, upon such internal evidence as they may afford, Mr. Ellis says, "he can only hazard a conjecture from the forms of the letters which are certainly the most ancient known specimens of the Chaldæan, and appear to have been invented for the purpose of writing the cuneiform character in a more cursive and expeditious manner (525). But how does this agree with what we have quoted above?--where is it said that one of these inscriptions answers precisely to the description given in the Talmud of the most ancient Hebrew letters, or the letters in وو |