wedded life, had usurped her place in her husband's affections, had trampled on her authority, and shown by every possible ostentatious device how the claims of the wife could be set aside by the fascinations of the mistress. Speak of Catherine as you will, but do not dispraise her to excite a false sympathy for the adulterous wife of the Duke de Brézé, to whose memory is raised that gorgeous monument at Rouen, with its hypocritical inscription and crocodile emblems.

Memorials of the haughty Italian and her lovely rival are to be seen in all parts of the château, as well as of the gay and magnificent Francis, of Henry II., and of a host of their contemporaries, whose portraits fill one entire chamber, the royal race extending from Charles VII. to Henri Quatre. It is in this apartment that the famous picture of the royal favourite, by Primaticcio, which represents her as the Goddess of the Silver Bow, is placed. Of this portrait the author of the "Bocages and Vines" has given the following graphic description :-"There is a happy mixture, in the dress, of the classical and the costume of the period, which marks the time, and yet does not shock the imagination. stepping along with graceful swiftness, her head rather turned, as if listening; she holds a hound and her bow; her head is, as usual, crowned with a crescent; the hair flies lightly on the air; her bodice is tight to the shape, and laced-the waist rather long and pointed; her full petticoat is of rich stuff, with gold embroidery, but it hangs in fine folds, and her springing foot is advanced. The landscape is spirited and good, the colouring well preserved, and the whole picture admirable. This is the most remarkable portrait of Diana, though there are others."

She is

Whether it was owing to the artistical preparations of M. de Villeneuve's cook, to the antique jars filled with fragrant lavender which were scattered throughout the apartments, to the perfume of the soft air that stole through some of the open casements, or to all these causes combined, I cannot well say, but a more delicious atmosphere than that which pervaded the whole château I certainly never breathed. It reconciled one at once to the idea of living always amidst these relics of a departed grandeur, and supplied the idea of comfort which is generally wanting in all show places, whether old or new.

But to see only, not to possess, was our lot, and delighted we were with all we saw, whether the eye rested on the crystal goblet of François Premier, on his richly-damasquined masse d'armes, or on the mirror of Mary Stuart, into which the ladies peeped with an expression of curiosity, as if they rather expected to behold the fair features of its former lovely owner. Perhaps they were not altogether disappointed by those which were presented to their view!

The interior of Chenonceaux is an epitome of the sixteenth century in France; the portraits of the chief actors during that time look down at us from the walls, and on every side are objects with which they were themselves familiar; their beds, their cabinets, their tapestry, their jewelled cups, their personal ornaments, everything which, while they were living, ministered to their pleasure or their pride. A few family pictures serve to keep up the link which unites the past with the present proprietorship; but there is nothing objectionably placed in Chenonceaux; and even the bust of Rousseau, in one of the lobbies, has a certain right to be there in consideration of the Dévin du Village, which was brought out in the little theatre at the southern extremity of the upper gallery over the Cher, when the clever and amiable Madame du Pin was the mistress

of the château. The lower gallery, a ball-room in the days of Catherine de' Medicis, is appropriately decorated with large medallion portraits of French kings and great men of the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries. They are well executed, and the likenesses are authentic. Amongst the treasures of Chenonceaux must not be omitted the beautifully enamelled china of Bernard Palizzi, on which-or rather in which are grouped the most perfect representations of reptile nature which it is possible to imagine. The lovers of this quaint but exquisite style of art will learn with pleasure that at Tours, at the present day, exists an artist who has discovered and executes to perfection the enamelling of Palizzi.

When we had supped full of the pleasures which the interior of Chenonceax afforded, we adjourned to the beautiful grounds which surround it, and passed some time amid the shady walks which stretch beside the swiftly-flowing and abounding Cher, the squirrels that crossed our path and the jays that screamed over our heads being the only sharers with us in this delicious solitude. In these shades we could willingly have passed the entire day, watching the current as it flowed mysteriously through the dark arches on which Chenonceaux rests, or filling up the picture suggested in such a spot by the memories of the past. But "Time, like a pitiless master," cried "Onward!" and we were obliged to attend to the summons; we walked back to the village where our steed was stabled, refreshed ourselves with some excellent Chasselas grapes at the cost of a few sous, and returned to Amboise as we went.

Uncertainty as to where our destiny would allow us to dine that day had been the motive which prompted me to request that the poulet rôti might be ready on our return, with the design of carrying it off as a snack by the way; but hunger was too strong for us, and Madame Dubois' promise had been so well kept that we could not resist the temptation, but ate it up as the Israelites ate the Paschal lamb, with our loins girded and our staffs in our hands, not even sitting down to the repast; and few people, perhaps, ever made a better meal or a hastier--the inexorable train being at hand to speed us on our journey.

For the sake of its cheapness, no less than for its orthography, I transcribe the mémoire of Madame Dubois, premising that the second item was for the carriage that took us to Chenonceaux.

When it is considered that the "provitions" consisted of a splendid fowl, an excellent bottle of Beaugency, pain à discrétion, and a quantity of the finest and largest pears that ever were seen, the charges of our smiling hostess will not be deemed exorbitant. With many promises to return at some future day, we bade farewell, and an hour afterwards were in the capital of Touraine.

But what we saw at Tours, at Loches, at Angers, and at Nantes, must be reserved for another occasion, here ending the "fyrste fytte" of "A Fortnight on the Loire."

DR. LAYARD AND THE LAST OF THE CHALDEES.

THERE has been a general feeling among travellers and learned men alike, that Dr. Layard, in recording his important and interesting explorations and discoveries, has passed over the labours of his predecessors in a very supercilious manner. We do not think that so severe an expres

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sion is merited. So remarkable an omission, in a work otherwise of great ability, arises probably from two simple causes; first of all, that, written mainly on the spot, Dr. Layard was really not acquainted with all that Dr. Hincks, Mr. John Landseer, and other Oriental scholars had done at home; and when he was intimate with the explorations and even with the persons of other travellers, he deemed them so well knownso generally accepted-that allusion to them on his part was cessary and supererogatory. Laying aside at the present moment the questions as to the antiquity of the Assyrian monuments, in which further research tends to show that Dr. Layard has erred on the side of excess, and those questions of comparative geography which would lead to the belief that Dr. Layard's Nineveh was the Asshur or Athur of early times, the learned doctor also visited in the same lands the so-called Nestorian Christians—the only remains of the Chaldeans of old-and whom the doctor proclaims, as if for the first time, to be "as much the remains of Nineveh and Assyria as are the rude heaps and ruined palaces." The only references made by Dr. Layard to previous travellers in the account given of this visit to the Chaldeans, are a brief notice of the school and dwelling-house built by the American missionaries, to Dr. Grant's travels and death, to Mr. Ainsworth's writing of Kasha Kana of Lizan as resembling in his manners and appearance an English clergyman, to the murder of Schultz, and, in his chapter on the Chaldean church and people generally, to the researches of Messrs. Smith and Dwight, missionaries whose travels did not extend to the mountain districts.

Now, without going back to olden days, or even to those of Tavernier, who visited the Nestorian country, the facts of the case in more modern times are as follow:-it was to the information obtained by Mr. Rich, the distinguished Resident at Baghdad, and by the expedition sent by her Majesty's government to the Euphrates and Tigris, that the revival of the interest felt in these remarkable people was in this country entirely and solely to be attributed; and it was by Messrs. Smith and Dwight's travels that the same interest was awakened in America. From the interest thus aroused in the two great Protestant nations for their brethren in the East, sprang first the missions of the Americans, and next an expedition for general exploratory purposes and friendly intercourse, sent from this country by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge and the Royal Geographical Society. The American missions in Persia, hearing of the proposed expedition from this country, to a certain extent anticipated it by at once despatching Dr. Grant, the medical man attached to the missions, into those mountainous districts, whose recesses were still at that time cast in gloom by the recent murder of the naturalist Schultz.

The results of the American expedition were the subsequent foundaNov.-VOL. LXXXVII. NO. CCCXLVII.

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tion of a mission within the country of the mountaineers, and at the same time the adoption of a belief in the Jewish origin of the so-called Chaldeans-a view of the subject which was ably expounded and ingeniously supported in a work published by Dr. Grant in this country in 1841, under the title of "The Nestorians; or, the Lost Tribes." The results of the English expedition were the establishment of friendly intercourse, not carried out as far as might have been wished, owing to the want of means and proper support; a physical and geological section of the whole chain of the Kurdistan mountains; the determination of many positions astronomically; and a strong and earnest vindication of the Chaldean or Assyrian origin of the so-called Nestorians and supposed converted Jews -a view of the matter which was not at the time so favourably received by the public as that upheld by the American missionaries, but which has now been boldly adopted and clearly and distinctly announced by Dr. Layard in his preface and in the body of his work, without the slightest reference or allusion to any previous sifting of the question, or to any of the laborious researches of his predecessors in the same field of inquiry.

Such an omission-one, to say the truth, scarcely in accordance with the rules generally adopted by travellers and men of science or learning towards one another-might be put down to inadvertence to ignorance it cannot be or to the circumstance before alluded to, that Dr. Layard deemed all that had gone before sufficiently well known in this country; but it is not a little singular, and therefore somewhat characteristic, that the same omissions occur in the case of his visit to the Sinjar country, and to the chief temple of the Yezidis, or Devilworshippers. The Sinjar, the abode of rebellious Kurds, and its skirts, ever haunted by predatory Bedouins, had baffled many a traveller in attempts to penetrate into the interior. This was effected, for the first time, by Dr. Forbes, an enterprising young traveller, who was subsequently murdered in Persia, and who published his success in the Journal of the Royal Geographical Society. This exploratory journey, made so few years before Dr. Layard's, deserved at least honourable notice. So, likewise, in regard to the Yezidis. Mr. Rich, in his time, described all that was then known of their great place of pilgrimagethat it was at Sheikh Adi, three hours' distant in the mountains beyond Sheikh Khan, to which he adds details concerning the practices of these strange people, who, as devil-worshippers, had a reputation which interfered greatly with Mr. Rich's as well as other travellers' wishes to see their chief place of worship. The English expedition was not, however, deterred by this bad repute, but it visited and examined (for the first time, it is believed) this mountain sanctuary of the devil-worshippers; yet the only notice which the successful explorer of Nineveh vouchsafes to these minor successes of his countrymen-important to them as vouchers for their zeal and enterprise-is to correct a trifling mistake made in their narrative, in which it is stated that the Yezidis burnt naphtha or bitumen in the temple, whereas they burnt oil!-the error having originated in the great accumulation of residue that had undergone imperfect combustion.

To return, however, to our subject: the English expedition became painfully aware, from a number of indications, that the interest taken by the Americans and the English in these remote Christian moun

taineers, and manifested by these proceedings, had aroused the jealousy of the Mohammedan population around them, and fanned their religious and national prejudices into a flame which threatened misfortune to the Chaldean mountaineers.

This sudden interest, so explicitly and so actively shown (wrote the historian of the English expedition in 1842) on the part of other Christian nations towards a tribe of people who have almost solely prolonged their independent existence on account of their remote seclusion and comparative insignificance, has called them forth into new importance in the eyes of the Mohammedans, and will, undoubtedly, be the first step to their overthrow, unless they are assisted in such an emergency by sound advice, or the friendly interference of the representatives of brotherly Christian nations at Constantinople. It will be the most cruel thing imaginable to have excited so much attention from surrounding powers towards the condition of these able, courageous, and pious mountaineers, only to leave them to the tender mercies of Mohammedanism.

This failing to produce any results beyond a number of letters, chiefly from clergymen of the Established Church, some of whom endeavoured to move Sir Robert Inglis to bring the subject before the House of Commons, one of the members of the Kurdistan expedition published in 1843 a tract, in which he once more advocated in earnest language the claims of the Christian Aborigines of the Turkish empire, and more especially of the Chaldean mountaineers, to protection.

With regard to the Chaldeans (observed the author) there can be no hesitation in pronouncing them, both from our own researches, and those of the American missionaries, as one of the churches the least contaminated by superstitious and unscriptural doctrines of the East. They want the light of education, and of a true knowledge of the gospel: isolated from the rest of the world, living in a difficultly accessible country, knowledge has rather retrograded than advanced; and it is much to be wondered at that more errors have not crept into their forms and discipline. No Christian nation offers so fine a field to the true philanthropist for disseminating the advantages of a Christian education; and no nation, for its simplicity of manners, its general morality and good conduct, its unfeigned piety, and its severed condition, is more deserving of the friendly communication and assistance of more favoured and more civilised countries.

This appeal met, however, with little success, but still attention was aroused to the condition of these poor mountaineers; and although persecuted and robbed of life and liberty, still it was not entirely without remonstrance. It is to be observed here, that at the time the English expedition went among the Chaldeans a Turkish army was actually encamped at Amadiyeh, on the confines of their country, in order to subject and enslave the people; but the Turkish troops were unable to do that which a Machiavelian policy employed the more hardy Kurd mountaineers to accomplish. To deny the complicity of the Turks in the inroads and massacres of the Kurds, when they were the first to enter into hostilities, is absurd. All the summer that an Englishman was with his small party, wandering amicably throughout the country of these gallant mountaineers, crossing their snow-clad mountains, or reposing in their beautifully wooded and watered valleys, the baffled Turks remained in hostile array without those tremendous ramparts that stood as if raised by Nature in defence of a long lost, and now almost extinct people. When they found that from the character of the country it was inaccessible to cannon, that it was also in every respect redoubtable to men unaccustomed to the most rugged mountains, they withdrew, leaving the work of destruction to be carried on by the more practised and equally merciless Kurds.