Dickens's poor Jo, he has got into a habit of being
'chivied and chivied,' and kept 'moving on;' till he
has learned to feel no particular tie or interest in
anybody or anything, and therefore concludes nobody |
can have any tie or interest in him. So he just
writes home by rare accident, when he happens to
remember it-or never writes at all-vanishes slowly
from everybody's reach, or drops suddenly out of the
world; nobody knows how, or when, or where; nor
ever can know, till the earth and sea give up their
dead-

But long they looked, and feared, and wept,
Within his distant home,

And dreamed, and started as they slept,

For joy that he was come.

Alas, how many a household, how many a heart, has borne that utterly irremediable and interminable anguish, worse far than the anguish over a grave, which Wordsworth has faintly indicated in The Affliction of Margaret:

Where art thou, my beloved son?

Where art thou, worse to me than dead?
Oh, find me-prosperous or undone !
Or if the grave be now thy bed,
Why am I ignorant of the same,
That I may rest, and neither blame
Nor sorrow may attend thy name?

I look for ghosts, but none will force
Their way to me. "Tis falsely said
That there was ever intercourse

Betwixt the living and the dead,
For surely then I should have sight
Of him I wait for day and night,
With love and longings infinite.

It may seem a painfully small and practical lesson to draw from an agony so unspeakable; but surely it cannot be too strongly impressed upon our wandering youth, who go to earn their living across the seas-in the Australian bush, or the Canadian forests, or the greater wildernesses of foreign cities, east and west: that they ought everywhere and under all available circumstances, to endeavour to leave a clue whereby their friends may hear of them, living or dead. That if, always, it is the duty of a solitary man or woman, while living, so to arrange affairs that his or her death shall cause least pain or trouble to any one else; surely this is tenfold the duty of those who go abroad: that whatever happens, they may be to those that love them, only the dead, never the 'lost."

Sometimes under this category come persons of a totally different fate-and yet the same-whose true history is rarely found out till it is ended, and perhaps not then. People who have sprung up, nobody knows how, who have nobody belonging to them-neither ancestors nor descendants-though as soon as they are gone, hundreds are wildly eager to make themselves out to be either or both. Of such is a case now pending, well known in the west of Scotland, where the next of kin' to an almost fabulous amount of property is advertised for by government, once in seven years; and where scores of Scotch cousins, indefinitely removed, periodically turn up, and spend hundreds of pounds in proving, or failing to prove-for all have failed hitherto-their relationship to the dear deceased.' This was an old gentleman in India, who neither there nor in his native Scotland had a single soul belonging to him, or caring to 'call cousins' with

him; who, indeed, had never been heard of till he died, worth a million or so, leaving all the wealth he had laboured to amass- -to-Nobody. Truly the poor solitary nabob may be put among the melancholy record of those 'lost,' whose names have been long erased, or were never writ, on the only tablet worth anything in this world-the register of friendship, kindred, home.

Similar instances of fortunes, greater or less, 'going a-begging' for want of heirs, are common enough— commoner than people have the least idea of. Government annually pockets-very honestly, and after long search and patient waiting-a considerable sum, composed of unclaimed bank dividends, and real and personal property of all kinds, the heir or heirs to which it is impossible to find. Among these, the amount of dead sailors' pay is said to be a remarkable item-thousands of pounds, being wages due, thus yearly lapsing to government, because all the ingenuity of the harbour-master, into whose hands the money is required to be paid, cannot find any relative of poor departed 'Bill' or 'Jack' whose place of birth has likely been never heard of-who has gone under so many aliases that even his right surname is scarcely discoverable, and often has lived, died, and been buried as simple 'Jack' or 'Bill,' without any surname at all.

This indifference to an hereditary patronymic is a curious characteristic of all wanderers of the lower class. Soldiers, sailors, and navvies engaged abroad, will often be found to have gone by half-a-dozen different surnames, or to have let the original name be varied ad libitum, as from Donald to M'Donald, and back again to Donaldson, possibly ending as O'Donnell, or plain Don. Frequently, in engaging themselves, they will give any new name that comes uppermost-Smith, Brown, Jones: or will change names with a 'mate'-after the German fashion of ratifying the closest bond of friendship-thereby producing inextricable confusion, should they chance to die, leaving anything to be inherited.

Otherwise-of course it matters not. They just drop out of life, nameless and unnoticed, of no more account than a pebble dropped into the deep sea; and yet every one of them must have had a father and a mother, may have had brothers and sisters, might have had wives and children, and all the close links of home. Much as we pity those who lose all thesethe bonds, duties, and cares which, however heavy sometimes, are a man's greatest safeguard and strength, without which he is but a rootless tree, a dead log drifted about on the waters-still more may we pity those, in all ranks and positions of life, who are thus

lost. Not in any discreditable sense, perhaps from no individual fault; but that fatal 'conjuncture of circumstances,' far easier to blame than to overcomepossibly from being too easy,' 'too good,' 'nobody's enemy but their own.' Still, by some means or other -God help them-they have let themselves drop out of the chain of consecutive existence, like a bead dropped off a string, and are 'lost.'

Equally so, are some, of whom few of us are so happy as never to have counted any-whom the American poet Bryant, already quoted, touchingly characterises as 'the living lost.' Not the fallen, the guilty, or even the prodigal, so hopelessly degraded that only at the gates of the grave and from one Father can he look for that restoration, to grant which, while he was yet afar off, his Father saw him.'

lads; and as for their owners, these have but few morals to make a present of, I fear, or even to keep for themselves. I have heard that there is a large class of American persons upon the other side of the Atlantic who pride themselves upon being 'smart' and spry,' and tolerably exempt from the trammels of conscientious principle. I wish sincerely-if they have any dollars-that these gentry would come across to Little Studdington, and try their luck with us: as my poor father used to observe, when any strangers paid us a visit, they would have to put both hands to keep their hats on their heads, I reckon, and then we should pick their pockets. The governor himself was quite unfit to live in such a place as this, and still more to keep an inn in it; and that he knew. But he had come to Little Studdington when it was inhabited not by horses, but by human beings, and these Yorkshire, indeed, but far from being turfites. A trout stream skirted our lawn before The Angler's Rest,' and his customers here were for the most part fishermen: easy-going, kind-hearted gentry, who were pleased with their clean and comfortable lodging, and valued their host very highly; hospitable folks, who would often ask him to dine with them in the little low-roofed parlour upon the captives to their rod and landing-net, and to crack a bottle with them out of his own cellar; respectable people, who, if they stayed over the Sunday, would go to the old gray church quite naturally, as though they did it every week at home, and very different from Mr Chifney Bity, the only trainer amongst us who has any religion at all, and who goes once a year upon the Sunday before the St Leger, in hopes-the sinner!-to get a pull upon his rivals by that superstitious device. My poor father never made but one bet in his life, and that one was the cause of his misfortune.

About ten years ago, the grand national and provincial steeple-chases took place at York, and attracted vast quantities of fine folks: there were a great number of entries for the principal stake; and several of the worst horses were, contrary to custom, permitted to run for it, instead of being 'scratched' by their owners the night before the race. York could not literally hold all its sporting visitors; and three very gentleman-like and well-dressed strangers came even so far as Little Studdington, and put up at The Angler's Rest.' They went into town, and returned from it every day in our four-wheel during the week; and when the races were over, they were so enamoured of the snug little house and its capital accommodation, that they remained with us a fortnight, eating and drinking of the best, and always delighted to see the old gentleman at their dinnertable. I think I can see my respected parent now, as he was wont to sit upon the extreme edge of his well-polished chair, in rapt astonishment at their fashionable conversation. If they happened to mention an absent friend under the rank of a baronet, it was in a sort of apologetic tone-their connections being so exclusively aristocratic. Good society was my poor father's weakness; and never having been familiar with the turf himself, his sense of the excellences of our nobility was quite overwhelming. The three friends were wont to play at cards after dinner for pretty large sums; and the game which seemed best to suit their elegant but eccentric taste was that of triangular cribbage. My father was a capital hand at this, and easily perceived that they were but indifferent performers; but they never dreamed of asking him to cut in, although one or other of them would often request his advice at an important crisis.

Cautious, indeed, as the governor naturally was, it must be confessed that his fingers itched to hold a hand against these folks who, as often as not, neglected to peg one for his heels,' or 'two for his nob,' but

his respect for their exalted condition always deterred him from expressing his wishes. Often and often did my poor father lament, after his misfortune, that he never had had a chance with the cards; but my belief is, that had he ventured upon such a thing, these unskilful gentry would have very rapidly improved in their play, and would have won his shirt off his back if they had played long enough. One afternoon, when they had dined as usual, early, and before the cards were produced, their conversation turned upon wagers: how Lord Clickclack had won ten thousand pounds by being dumb for a day; how the Duke of Oxfordshire had backed himself to walk from Pall-mall to Bond Street on a levee morning, without opening his eyes; and of the ingenious device of his antagonist, the Marquis of Luxall, in driving over him in a Hansom cab until he did so; with many other anecdotes of the aristocracy not included in the collection of Mr Burke.

"This sort of thing is much harder than it appears to be,' observed one of the three gentlemen. 'Now, I will lay ten pounds that no man keeps himself in one position and counts the ticks of that great clock, for instance, for a whole hour.'

'How do you mean?' exclaimed my father, greatly interested.

"Why, that no man can sit in a chair-your chair, for instance-facing the clock, and wag his head from right to left as Old Time with the scythe yonder is wagging, for the space of an hour, and never say any words but "Here she comes, and there she goes," as the clock says.'

'You bet ten pounds that I don't do that?' cried the governor.

'Not with you,' replied the other coolly; 'I don't want to win your money, my good man. I will bet either of my two friends that they do not do it.'

'Nay,' said one of them, "tis easy enough; but I would not bother myself with such a thing for twice the money. I don't see,' added he, 'why you should not give our good Boniface a chance, either.'

'Do, pray, do,' cried my father, who was perhaps the most stolid man in the world, and could have sat six hours doing anything he was told to do without any inconvenience. I'll bet you.'

So, rather against his will, as it seemed, he who had proposed the conditions agreed to make the wager. My father was then placed in his chair immediately opposite the clock; the stakes on either side were placed upon the table within his view; he was warned that every means would be resorted to short of laying hands upon him to induce him to look away, or say anything besides the words agreed upon; and as the clock struck four, the old gentleman's head had begun to wag, 'Here she comes, and there she goes,' and 'Here she comes, and there she goes,' very slowly and solemnly, keeping time with the pendulum.

'He'll lose,' cried one of the gentlemen. 'Certain to lose,' replied another laughing. 'Hallo, old chap, there goes your window-pane!'

There was a crash of breaking glass, that made the governor wince again, but he did not alter his position a hairbreadth, or desist one quarter of a tick from his monotonous task. Some of the particular china which then ornamented our oaken shelves next came down with a run; but its owner's face only turned a little pale, as he thought what stepmother would say about it. Here she comes, and there she goes,' was all it drew from him.

His antagonist seemed now to have given up the destructive plan as a failure.

"I say, Boniface,' cried he, 'I am going to put the stakes in my pocket-I am;' and suiting the action to the word, he swept off the two ten-pound notes into his waistcoat before the governor's eyes.

A shadow of anxiety flitted for an instant across my

parent's brow, but Here she comes, and there she goes,' was all that torture itself would at that time have wrung from him. Ten minutes of the terrible ordeal had already passed.

'Boniface,' observed the sporting gentleman with feeling, we must now part. My friends and myself have passed a pleasant time at Little Studdington, but our visit is now at an end. One of us has just gone out to order the four-wheel; and by rapid driving, we shall just catch the express train to London. In anticipation of this position of affairs, our little articles are already packed and ready to be placed under the seat. Receive, my dear sir, the assurances of our consideration. I wish that we had anything else to offer you in return for your very genial hospitality; this tenpound note of yours will remind us, be assured, of your kindness, until the day when it shall be spent. I would that the terms of our little wager permitted us to shake you by the hand. Unlucky it is, too, that we start from the back-door, so that you will be unable, of course, to see the very last of us. In forty minutes about, you will be released from this irksome task, and we ourselves shall be at York, Boniface. Heaven bless you. What! not a word at parting?' 'Here she comes, and there she goes,' cried the governor stoutly, but suffused with a cold perspiration. 'Yes, here she comes,' repeated the sporting gentleman derisively, as the sound of wheels made itself to be distinctly heard from the back; and there she will go in about a minute: she is a fast mare.'

He closed the door, and the governor was left alone with the broken window, and the smashed china, and the infernal pendulum, repeating his prescribed formula with the utmost constancy, but with an anxious expression of countenance.

To him presently entered my maternal step-parent, who is of a suspicious temperament. Whatever have you been about, John, to let them chaps go away without any one to drive Polly, and at such a pace Goodness gracious, the china ! What has happened? Rachel, Betty, Dick,' screamed she, 'what has come to your poor father? Do but look at him! Speak to us, John.'

as

'Here she comes, and there she goes,' murmured the governor sadly, and swaying himself slowly from side to side like a mandarin.

I shall never forget the scene as long as I live: I laughed until I could stand up no longer, and then I lay down on the floor and laughed there. The indignation that was thrown into the old gentleman's tones as he pursued his terrible task, only made the matter ten times more ridiculous.

'He is mad, stark staring mad,' cried my stepmother, as she laid her hand upon his shoulder.

'Here she comes, and there she goes,' exclaimed my father irascibly, as with one well-directed blow of his elbow he tumbled the old lady upon the floor.

Then I really thought he had gone mad, and went to get a rope to tie his arms; only the foam flew from his lips-he was in that passion of rage that I did not dare come near him when I had got it. We sent for the policeman therefore, and of course we sent for the doctor; and presently they both arrived, and were as astonished as we were to see what was taking place.

'When did this fit come on him?' asked the medical man, as the old clock struck five.

'Here she comes, and there she goes,' yelled the governor, starting up from his chair. 'Where are those three thieves? They have robbed me of ten pounds, and board, and horse-hire, and lodging for fifteen days and a half.' (He had been calculating all this, poor fellow, in case they should have really gone away, while he was repeating his foolish sentences.) 'Ride after them-ride!'

Alas! we did ride, but we never came up with

them. They had left our Polly at the station in the four-wheel, but they were off nobody knows where. We found out only, long afterwards, that our visitors were three of the London swell-mob, who had been warned out of York by the detectives during the race week, to which circumstance we had been of course indebted for their patronage. My poor father never held up his head again: the jockey-boys were always wagging theirs whenever they saw him, and crying out: 'Here she comes, and there she goes,' until he was driven into his grave.

It is a sad story from beginning to end; but now, that I have fairly published it, I feel that there is something off my mind. There will be no need for futile attempts upon my part to conceal this disgrace to my family any more. And perhaps, after all, one of the reasons why I am so 'up to the time of day' myself-as we say in Yorkshire-is because of the warning that was afforded to me in my poor father's watching the clock.

AN UNRAVELLED MYSTERY. INTIMATELY Connected with the first impressions derived from Scriptural readings and lessons, the words Babylon, Nineveh, and Assyria have been familiar to us all from early childhood. Yet, when we seriously inquire what it is we really do know respecting the history, or even geographical boundaries of ancient Assyria, we are reluctantly compelled to acknowledge our total ignorance. Profane history, it is true, records the names of three of its monarchs previous to the invasion of the Medes. We read of the Bactrian and Indian expeditions of Ninus, the wondrous works of the masculine Semiramis, the Sybaritic splendours of the effeminate Sardanapalus; but the best judges are undecided whether we should accept these relations as history, or class them among the numberless other fables of the myth-inventing ages.

A new light, however, has lately been thrown upon this most interesting period in the world's history. Modern enterprise had scarcely discovered, ere modern ingenuity began to decipher, with what amount of success we are about to relate, the long-hidden monuments of Assyria. When Mr Layard brought to light the extraordinary bass-reliefs of Koyunjik, a new chapter in the book of history was at once laid open. Not only the inscribed records, but the pursuits, the religious ceremonies and amusements, the modes of warfare and hunting, even the very dresses of a previously unknown people, were first exhibited to modern eyes. And though the inscriptions could not then be deciphered, though the mere style of art of the sculptures was not the least novel element in the strange discovery, still there could be little doubt respecting the antiquity of the monuments, or the purpose for which they were designed. The peculiar wedge-shaped character used in the inscriptions proved that the monuments belonged to a period preceding the conquest of Alexander; for it was known that, after the subjugation of Western Asia by the Macedonians, the cuneiform character fell into disuse; while the custom of recording events and promulgating edicts by inscriptions on stones, was also known to be of the very highest antiquity. Need we say that the divine commands were first given to man on tablets of stone. Job, too, it will be recollected, emphatically exclaims: Oh that my words were now written! ... That they were graven with an iron pen and lead in the rock for ever!" Indeed, there could have been no less imperishable method of preserving important national records; and thus it is that the inscribed walls of palaces and rock-tablets have handed down to us, in these latter ages, the authentic history of ancient Assyria.

6

The character in which these inscriptions are written has been variously named, according to the fancies of different describers. Some term it the arrow-headed; the French, tête-à-clou, or nail-headed; the Germans, keilförmig, equivalent to our phrase cuneiform, or wedge-shaped; and certainly this last most accurately expresses its peculiar form, each of the letters or syllables being composed of several distinct wedges united in certain combinations. It is considered probable that at first the letters were mere lines, and at a subsequent period the wedge-form was added to them, either as an embellishment, or to give them ideographic properties, similar to the picture-writing of the Egyptians. If the latter, however, were the case, all traces of their symbolical values are irretrievably lost. We may also add, that, like the Egyptians, the Assyrians at a later period of their history possessed a cursive writing of rounded characters, not unlike the Hebrew, which was employed for written documents, while the cuneiform was exclusively reserved for monumental purposes.

The cuneiform character, under certain modifications-the groups of characters representing syllables being diversely combined in different countries-was used over the greater part of Western Asia until, as we have already observed, the overthrow of the ancient Persian Empire by Alexander the Great. To this circumstance we mainly owe the very remarkable progress lately made in deciphering it. The Persian monarchs, previous to the conquest of Alexander, ruled over all the nations using this peculiar form of writing. These consisted of three principal peoples or races. Two of them, the Persian and the Tatar, spoke a dialect not very dissimilar to that still spoken by their descendants. The language of the third, the Babylonians, including the Assyrians, was allied to the Hebrew and Arabic, and totally different from that spoken by the two former races; moreover, it has been extinct and unknown for at least two thousand years. This last was the language which the decipherers of the Assyrian monuments had to reconstruct and reanimate from its equally obscure and long obsolete cuneiform characters. The first step towards the solution of so dark an enigma, was realised by the following circumstance. The Persian kings, when recording important events by inscriptions on stone tablets, used all the three languages spoken by their subjects. Thus originated the trilingual inscriptions of ancient Persia, the tablets containing them being divided into three columns, each written in a different language, and in the respective modification of cuneiform peculiar to each language, yet all three conveying one and the same meaning. The most celebrated of the trilingual inscriptions are found on the palaces of Darius and Xerxes at Persepolis, over the tomb of Darius, and on the rocks of Belistan. The latter, as aids to deciphering the Assyrian monuments, are the most important of any, as they record the principal events in the reign of Darius, and contain long lists of countries, cities, tribes, and kings; proper names being the only reliable index to the values of the cuneiform characters. The Persian version of the trilingual inscriptions, varying little from the modern Persian, having been translated, and its grammar and alphabet reduced to a certainty, a clue was gained to the Assyrian version, and from thence to the monuments discovered by Mr Layard. The clue thus obtained was followed up in defiance of the most formidable obstacles. To instance one, we may just mention that while the Persian modification of the cuneiform contains but thirty-nine signs, there are no less than four hundred in the Assyrian.

The various processes adopted to decipher the Assyrian inscriptions, from the slight clue we have just mentioned; the steps gradually made in the investigation; the going astray and the returning to,

or even the accidentally hitting on, the right path; in short, all the particulars relating to this most extraordinary search in the dark, are of the highest scientific and philological interest, though utterly unsuited for the pages of a popular journal. Nor shall we presume to venture an opinion on the disputed questions respecting the original discovery of the means employed for interpreting the Assyrian cuneiform, or whether it be a Semitic language or not. It must suffice for us to say, that the names of Sir Henry Rawlinson and Dr Hincks will ever be connected with this great triumph of our age and nation: less than a triumph it cannot be termed, for the investigation has been rewarded with complete success.

But though empires rise and fall, and tongues and tribes die out and disappear, still the race of the Van Twillers never becomes extinct: there always have been, and probably ever will be, many members of the family of the doubters. Consequently, though the decipherers of the Assyrian inscriptions detected on the strangely graven tablets the names of persons, cities, and nations, in historical and geographical series, and found them mentioned in proper connection with events recorded in sacred and profane history, still the doubters, gravely shaking their heads, refused to believe in the soundness of the system by which Dr Hincks and Sir Henry Rawlinson interpreted the mysteries of the cuneiform. Nor were the doubters without some show of reason for their unbelief. A great cause of difficulty in deciphering the cuneiform is what have been termed the variants—namely, different letters possessing the same alphabetic value, or, in other words, cuneiform groups representing a syllable, but not always the same syllable-sometimes one, and sometimes another. Accordingly, the doubters, not unreasonably, said that such a licence in the use of letters or syllables must be productive of the greatest uncertainty-that even the ancient Assyrians themselves could not have read a writing of so vague a description, and therefore the interpretations founded upon such a system must necessarily be fallacious. To this the decipherers replied, that experience has proved that the uncertainty arising from the variants is not so great as might be imagined. Most of the cuneiform groups having only one value, others having always the same value in the same word or phrase, so the remaining difficulties and uncertainties of reading are reduced within moderate limits. Besides, speaking practically, and taking into consideration the newness of the study, there is a fair amount of agreement between different interpreters of the Assyrian historical writings of average difficulty.

The doubters, however, not being satisfied, advantage was taken of an opportunity which lately occurred to test, as closely as possible, the truth of the system of decipherment adopted by Dr Hincks and Sir Henry Rawlinson, not only with the view of silencing the unbelievers, but also to prove that a correct basis of translation had been established, upon which other and future investigators could implicitly rely.

Her Majesty's government having sanctioned the trustees of the British Museum to publish lithographed copies of the most interesting Assyrian inscriptions, under the superintendence of Sir Henry Rawlinson; and Sir Henry having announced his intention of publishing translations of those lithographs, accompanied with transcriptions of the same into Roman letters, it occurred to Mr Fox Talbot that a desirable opportunity was thus offered to test the truth of the system. Accordingly, in March last, Mr Talbot prepared a translation of the first lithographed inscription, and transmitted it sealed to the Royal Asiatic Society, with a request that the Society would preserve it sealed, until Sir Henry's translation was published, and then compare the two-Mr Talbot considering that if any special agreement appeared between these