the Oriental languages, and speaks the Persian and Turkish
fluently. He is enthusiastic and indefatigable in every thing
he undertakes, and plentifully endowed with courage, prudence,
and good-nature."

This was more than two years before Layard himself, in his "Nineveh and
its Remains," exhibited those triumphs of his intelligence and devotion
which have secured for him a place among the most famous travellers and
antiquaries in the world.

We take the occasion of copying the above portrait from the last number
of _Bentley's Miscellany_ to present, from various authentic sources, a
brief sketch of Dr. Layard's history. He is descended from the noble
French Protestant family of Raymond de Layarde, who accompanied the
Prince of Orange into England. He was born at Paris, during a temporary
visit of his parents to that metropolis, on the 5th of March, 1817. His
father, who was the son of the Rev. Dr. Henry Peter John Layard, Dean of
Bristol, filled a high civil office in Ceylon, between the years 1820
and 1830, and took great interest in the circulation of the Scriptures
among heathen nations. He was a man of considerable classical learning,
and of refined tastes. During the youth of his son, he lived at
Florence, where our young antiquary had free access to the stores of the
Pitti Palace, and of the Tribune. He thus became familiar from his
infancy with the language of Tuscany, and formed his taste for the fine
arts and literature upon the models of painting and sculpture amid which
he lived, and in the rich libraries which he frequented. In this manner
he added a thorough knowledge of modern languages to a competent
acquaintance with those of Greece and Rome. Here, also, he acquired,
almost involuntarily, a power over his pencil, which, long dormant, was
called forth by the sight of slabs with the noblest sculptures and the
finest inscriptions, crumbling into dust. No draughtsman had been
provided for his assistance, and had he not instantly determined to
arrest by the quickness of his eye, and the skill thus acquired,
improved subsequently by Mr. Kellogg's companionship, those fleeting
forms which were about to disappear for ever, many of the finest remains
of ancient art would have been irrecoverably lost.

On his return from Italy to England, he was urged to choose the
profession of the law; but his thirst for knowledge, his love of
adventure, and his foreign tastes and habits, led him, after a brie