This little work is an ingenious attempt to tell in lively verse several popular Wiltshire traditions of considerable antiquarian interest. The writer seems to have taken pains to present the traditions in as accurate a form as possible, and assures us that “all available manuscripts and other authorities have been carefully consulted.” There is much in the versification to remind us of the “Ingoldsby Legends.”

The study of archÆology has lately made signal progress in France as well as in England. A great many works have been published bearing upon the subject, and the volumes issued annually by Messrs. Perrot and Chipiez deserve to be especially mentioned as excellent specimens of what that class of literature ought to be. They are not intended for savants properly so called, and therefore they do not bristle with erudite quotations, or hieroglyphic figures and cuneiform texts; neither are they, on the other hand, elementary manuals or abridgments for the use of beginners; the two authors have started their joint undertaking for the express purpose of giving a somewhat detailed account of the progress of art amongst the different nations of antiquity, calling to their assistance the resources furnished by wood and steel engraving, chromo-lithography, &c.; and the improvements which during the last half-century have been introduced into the several departments of pictorial illustration have rendered their work, in that respect, comparatively easy.

The publication we are now reviewing will be terminated in five or six volumes. Messrs. Perrot and Chipiez had, last year, introduced us to Egypt; their second instalment is devoted to ChaldÆa and Assyria; it marks, therefore, a signal development in Æsthetic culture, and in the various expressions of architecture, painting, and sculpture. From the civilisation which Messrs. Champollion, Mariette, MaspÉro, Young, and de RougÉ have unfolded before us, we are now invited to pass on to that with which the names of Sir A. Layard, Sir H. Rawlinson, Messrs. Jules Oppert, and Fr. Lenormant have made us tolerably familiar.

The first chapter of this volume treats of the general characteristics of ChaldÆo-Assyrian society, and naturally opens with geographical and ethnological details. M. Perrot, we are happy to see, pays a well-deserved tribute of praise to Professor Rawlinson’s celebrated work, “The Five Great Monarchies of the Ancient Eastern World,” making, at the same time, long quotations from it, as well as from the researches of Sir A. Layard, M. Hormuzd Rassam, &c. Whilst enumerating the various elements which have contributed to make up the population of Assyria and ChaldÆa, our author notices the hypothesis recently put forth by some antiquarians who would number amongst those elements the Aryan one. He maintains that if it did exist it was only in a very small proportion—so small, indeed, that it is scarcely worth taking it into account; on the other hand, if we admit the theories of Messrs. J. Oppert and Fr. Lenormant, we have to register a fact of the most interesting and unlooked for nature. It was hitherto believed that we could not go beyond the families of Sem and of Kusch, which occupied ChaldÆa at the time when history is supposed to commence. From certain inscriptions, however, it seems perfectly clear that the oldest idiom spoken, or at any rate written, there, belonged neither to the Aryan nor to the Semitic families, nor yet to any of the groups of languages which are considered as including the old Egyptian. It was essentially an agglutinative idiom, and by its grammatical system, as well as by some of the elements of its vocabulary, it may be assimilated to the Finnish, the Turkish, and other cognate languages. M. Perrot then goes on to discuss the questions connected with writing, religion, and government, and to describe the form of government which prevailed on the banks of the Euphrates and Tigris. The reader will remark that this first chapter is a kind of introduction to the book; for art, which is the outcome of civilisation, cannot be well understood till we are acquainted with the elements from which it originated. Architecture, sculpture, painting, and the industrial arts constitute the subjects of the next seven chapters; and here, again, the eschatological ideas of the ChaldÆo-Assyrians give us a clue to the character of the monuments which they raised to the dead. When we say raised to the dead we are guilty of a slight error; for all the researches of Sir A. Layard, Messrs. Hormuzd Rassam, de Sarzec, Botta, and Place have failed to bring to light a single dÉbris, whether inscription or sculpture, from which we might know what the Assyrians believed about the destiny of man after this life. In Lower ChaldÆa a few monuments have indeed been discovered, but they are extremely simple, and the contrast between Egyptian and ChaldÆo-Assyrian art in this respect is wonderfully striking. As M. Perrot remarks, we know a great deal more about the sepulchral rites, the tombs and the funereal remains of the Egyptians than about the palaces of their princes. It is just the reverse in Assyria: “We have never seen represented the fall, the death, or the burial of an Assyrian warrior; one might almost suppose that a feeling of national pride has prevented the artist from admitting that an Assyrian warrior could die; all the corpses we see portrayed on the battlefield are those of enemies; we recognise them because they are frequently mutilated and decapitated.” If, however, ChaldÆa has only a few sepulchral monuments to boast of, it abounds in burial-grounds, and between Niffar and Mougheir, more particularly, every mound is a necropolis. Combining this fact with the no less striking one that there are no cemeteries in Assyria, M. Loftus has put forth the opinion that the inhabitants of this last-named country, being ChaldÆan by origin, regarded ChaldÆa as a kind of holy land where they systematically buried their dead, and all persons rich enough to pay the somewhat heavy expenses connected with the removal of the body, the religious ceremonies, &c., &c., made a point of committing their departed relations and friends to their eternal rest in the national campo-santo from which they had in the first place emigrated. As for the poor and the slaves, those who were reckoned as nothing when alive, they were cast unceremoniously after their death into the first hole or ditch available for the purpose.

We must say a word or two on the concluding chapter before bringing this notice to an end: it consists of an ingenious parallel between the civilisations of Egypt and of ChaldÆa, thus recapitulating the principal facts given in the first volume as well as those contained in the one which has formed the subject of the present article.

The illustrations, amounting to nearly five hundred, are of two different kinds; some occupy a whole page (temples, palaces, statues, &c.), others are inserted in the text; nor must we forget an excellent alphabetical index, and an appendix of additions and corrections.

Under the above quaint title Messrs. Field & Tuer have issued from “Ye Leadenhalle Presse” a little volume—or rather, two volumes in one—which is likely in future ages to rank high amongst the treasures of the book collector. The work consists of an amusing collection of stories and bon mots relating to authors, editors, and “devils,” which we suppose is another name for the men of Paternoster-row; and there is an innocent raciness about them—the jokes, not the publishers—which cannot fail to entertain the reader. For the benefit of the uninitiated the editor, in his introductory remarks, states that “quads” are “little metal blanks used by the printer for filling up gaps,” and that they “are not of much account, although he cannot get along without them; hence the application of the word to printers’ jokes.” The book is baulked out at the end with extra leaves of paper fastened together and hollowed out in the centre, and in the little nest so formed reposes a copy of the miniature or midget-folio “Quad,” another equally quaint volume, containing some 160 pages, and measuring but one inch in width by one and a half inches in length.

The ArchÆological Journal for July contains papers on “The Gallo-Roman Monuments of Reims,” by Mr. Bunnell Lewis; “On the Methods Used by the Romans for Extinguishing Conflagrations,” by the Rev. Joseph Hirst; “Jewish Seal found at Woodbridge,” by C. W. King, M.A.; “Roman Pottery found at Worthing,” by Mr. A. J. Fenton; “Roman Inscriptions discovered in Britain in 1883,” by Mr. W. Thompson Watkin; “The Battle of Lewes,” by Rev. W. R. W. Stephens, M.A.; and “Some Remarks on the Pfahlgraben and Swalburg Camp in Germany, in Relation to the Roman Wall and Camps in Northumberland,” by Mr. James Hilton, F.S.A.