ficent pavement, which he eventually secured for the British Museum, and which he thus describes : "It measured about fifteen feet by nine, and contained, besides the elegant and chaste designs, a colossal female bust, and two priestesses, full length, and robed. The heads of the latter were rather damaged; but there can be but one opinion as to the artistic talent displayed in the execution of this mosaic, whether as regards grace, attitude, or colouring. It is an exquisite specimen of ancient art, to recover which we had to break through two distinct pavements. undoubtedly proves that those who built upon it, during different periods, were entirely ignorant of its existence." (p. 176.) This Whether this pavement is Punic or Roman, he discusses at some length, and we think that he has the best of the argument in assigning it to the artists of Carthage, in the early days of her splendour. The pavement was removed by the aid of glue and canvass, and is now to be seen amongst the treasures of our national collection. The author considers it to have been the pavement of a chapel dedicated to Dido and Anna, Ceres and Proserpine. His next discoveries were made amongst what he believed to be the remains of the temple of "the dreaded Saturn,-the Moloch and Boal Kammun of the Carthaginians." (p. 285.) This was a circular edifice, of a very peculiar construction, judging from its foundation, probably composed of three domes one within another, with twelve gradually expanding passages, reaching out from the centre like the spokes of a wheel. Here, by sinking a shaft in the middle, to a considerable depth, the workmen came upon a thick layer of burnt earth, mixed with bones. A little lower was the natural rock. Here, then, may have been the remains of human sacrifices offered to Moloch, by which the religion of Carthage was rendered so horrible. Within the same temple was found a specimen of its mosaic pavement, also the base of a fluted column, embedded in the masonry of the building, and probably belonging to an earlier temple, and quantities of fragments of precious marble. In his further researches, in various parts of the site of Carthage, he met with masonry, pavements, inscriptions, and broken vessels, with distinctive marks enough to enable him to assign them to the several periods of the history of the place. Thus he opened the foundations of eight chambers of a Punic habitation, in one of which he found a beautiful pavement of green marble; he met with several Roman tombs, and could settle one spot as the site of a Christian church. He found inscriptions of which some belonged to the early years of Carthage. These are now in process of being deciphered. Others were of later date, and are much mutilated. So far, also, as there is a clue to their meaning, they appear to be of little interest. He searched the extensive catacombs in vain, for the dead had been plundered already of the memorials of affection which had been deposited with them. Having finished his work at Carthage, a three years' labour (484), he visited Utica and other places, with little other result than that of satisfying himself that there is a mine of interest still awaiting the antiquarian in that once remarkable but now insignificant region of Africa. He brought away the most beautiful of the pavements which he believed to be certainly a work of Punic art, together with fragments of others, one belonging to the Christian period. But excepting the best of the mosaics, and fragments of columns, he seems to have brought away everything he found that was likely to be of the slightest interest. To a great extent he has ascertained that all which can be expected from further research would be to trace out the streets, and to fix the sites of the principal buildings, and to make, in fact, a ground-plan of the city. It is an object hardly worthy of so great and costly a labour, and we may be content to accept the author's provisional topographical drawing, which he gives to the world with no little confidence, and which is only to be received with hesitation because of the imperfectness of the data which he had for his guidance. There are the traces of the foundations of one building which has an interest for the Christian-the theatre, in which Perpetua, and a band of believers with her, were thrown amongst the wild beasts, and torn to pieces before the eyes of the savage multitude of heathen. The engravings in this book, taken from photographs, are of very high interest, showing the general aspect of the country, and the visible remains, such as they are, of what once was Carthage. The drawings of the chief mosaic are also valuable additions to the other illustrations. We have shown that a work so rambling, and filled with so much surplusage, is a disappointment. We looked for a text answering to the title-page, without the very stupid stories, and with the disquisitions much reduced, and consigned to separate chapters, or, better still, to an appendix. If there was little to tell that was really to the point, that little would have met, nevertheless, with a hearty welcome. To have ascertained that this was indeed the site of Carthage, to have afforded a probable plan of its topography, to have brought to light a few specimens of its ancient art, and to have collected some illustrations of its progressive history, these were no small things to have accomplished. There is one of the disquisitions (unnecessarily swelled out in its dimensions) of which our readers will like to hear. Where are Tarshish and Ophir? The opinions with respect to Tarshish have been numerous and dissimilar. Jonah, flying to Tarshish by embarking at Joppa, seems to fix its site in the Mediterranean. Some commentators have held that Carthage is meant, and this is the opinion of Dr. Davis. The difficulty in the way of this interpretation is, that two ships were built at Eziongeber. But his answer is worthy of consideration, and not improbable, that from (may we call it the dockyard? of) Eziongeber the small vessels of those days might pass through the canal of Sesostris into the Nile, and so reach the Mediterranean. He also traces the etymology of Carthage and Tarshish to a common root; and he maintains that the commodities which Solomon's fleet brought from Tarshish were all such as might be procured at Carthage. Ophir has more generally been supposed to be in the far east, but Dr. Davis reminds us that the ships of Tarshish went to Ophir, returned after the same interval, and with the like cargoes; and, by reference to the Hebrew and Arabic, he connects Ophir with Aphrica, which designated a district within the territories of Carthage. These etymological niceties are only of value as corroborative of other and weightier reasons. The labours, of which we have thus attempted to glean out a summary, were the labours of more than three years, effected by means of workmen who were scarcely companions, apart from civilized society, and by one who was content to live in "rude habitations, and to encounter many privations." His reward was the possession of a mosaic pavement, the discovery of a few others, and some few fragments of things curious beside, but they were all gained for a national repository, not for himself. That he might be enabled thus to delve, borne harmless as regarded the expense, appeared to him to be a sufficient recompense; though, perhaps, the attainment of some measure of renown may have been within the scope of his expectations, as the reward of an anticipated achievement of great value. If they who know anything of the worth of an incorruptible crown, and who have the opportunity of seeking the salvation of souls, were all as persevering, self-denying, and devoted as was this seeker of curiosities, missionary societies would have less occasion to complain that the want of suitable men is even greater than the want of pecuniary means. So also, for the metropolis, and for other scenes of deplorable spiritual destitution, men of ardent zeal and of undaunted perseverance, would be more easily found, to dig into the foundations of all that woe, and to labour, in God's strength, for trophies better than mosaics and statues. THE BIGLOW PAPERS: AMERICAN AFFAIRS. The Biglow Papers. By James Russell Lowell. With a Preface, by the author of "Tom Brown's School-days." London: Trübner and Co. 1861. THIS is a work of small size, and, apparently, of merely local and transitory importance. But the "winged words" of the poet and the satirist often exhibit a life and power of which their authors were scarcely conscious. Four lines of William Cowper's "Hast thou by statute shoved from its design The Saviour's feast,-His own blest bread and wine; An office-key, a picklock to a place?" are believed by many to have produced, by a gradual leavening of the public mind, the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts. In our own day, we have seen the foolish phrase which had become current in the House of Commons, "I only used the words in a parliamentary sense," swept clean away by a page of welldirected ridicule. But the "Biglow Papers" have had a higher aim. They expressed, in the vivid language of genius, the indignation of a free and educated New Englander at the submission of the Northern States to the predominance of the South; and they have doubtless had a large share in producing that rising up of the North in assertion of its own rights which has ended in a fearful quarrel between the two great divisions of what used to be "the United States.” James Russell Lowell was born at Cambridge, in Massachusetts, in 1819, and, having been educated at Harvard College, he was chosen, in 1855, to succeed Mr. Longfellow in the chair of Modern Literature. "The Biglow Papers" consist of only nine pieces of verse, chiefly satirical, levelled at various follies or crimes which excited the author's indignation about the years 1846 and 1847. They resemble, therefore, in one important respect, the "Letters of Junius;" which, in like manner, were political effusions called forth by the public events of the day, but which have been read by the people of England for four generations, although the occasions which drew them forth have long ceased to excite any interest. Mr. Lowell is a New Englander, a man of education, refinement, and genius,-a hater of slavery, a hater of war, and full of indignation against "the South," because he found "the South" a maintainer of slavery, and at all times ready for war. His jealousy had also been roused by the constant ascendancy of the South in the politics of the United States; an ascendancy not resting on superior numbers, wealth, or intelligence, but solely on assumption, and on superior electioneering skill. These three ideas, then the unlawfulness of aggressive war, the immoralities of the slave system, and the submissiveness of the northern states to southern pretensions,-form the main topics of the book. But it is the work of a man of genius: and after having gained an increasing popularity in America, it has now reached Old England itself, and the present edition, of 1861, is stated to be "the third English edition." This shows that the book is no common one. We are reading with interest in England, in 1861, electioneering rhymes written in Massachusetts fifteen years ago. And this, too, in spite of one peculiar hindrance. Mr. Lowell, in order to speak to the people in their own language, wrote his verses in "the Yankee dialect." We are not unaccustomed to things of this kind in England, where, only two or three years ago, a respectable clergyman published two volumes of "Poems in the Dorsetshire Dialect;" Burns's. poems are another instance; but still this harsh and strange outside must prove a hindrance to a general or speedy welcome. The first of Mr. Lowell's rhymes is a scornful tirade addressed to the recruiting sergeant, who was enlisting men in Massachusetts for the Mexican war,-a war which Mr. Lowell rightly deemed iniquitous. We copy a few of the stanzas : ""Taint your eppyletts an' feathers Make the thing a grain more right; "Wut's the use o' meetin'-goin' This e're cuttin' folks's throats. "They may talk o' Freedom's airy (aërie) Fer the barthrights of our race; |