of the most interesting is that connected with the disentombment of the Nineveh marbles, and the discovery of the long-lost cuneiform or arrow-headed character, in which the inscriptions on them are written,—a kind of writing which had been lost to the world since the period of the Macedonian conquest of Persia.

III.17

An intelligent cadet of the East India Company, stationed at Kermanshah, in Persia, had observed the curious cuneiform inscriptions on the old monuments in the neighborhood,—so old that all historical traces of them had been lost,—and amongst the inscriptions which he copied was that upon the celebrated rock of Behistun,—a perpendicular rock rising abruptly some 1,700 feet from the plain, the lower part bearing inscriptions for the space of about three hundred feet, in three languages,—the Persian, Scythian,and Assyrian. Comparison of the known with the unknown, of the language which survived with the language that had been lost, enabled this cadet to acquire some knowledge of the cuneiform character and even to form an alphabet. Mr. (afterwards Sir Henry) Rawlinson sent his tracings home for examination. No professors in colleges knew anything about the cuneiform character; but there was a ci-devant clerk of the East India House,—a modest unknown man of the name of Norris,—who had made this little-understood subject his study, to whom the tracings were submitted; and so accurate was his knowledge, that, though he had never seen the Behistun rock, he pronounced that Rawlinson had not copied the puzzling inscription with proper exactness. Rawlinson, who was still in the neighborhood of the