LITERATURE, ART, ETC.,

Southland Times, Issue 3296, 13 January 1879, Page 3

LITERATURE, ART, ETC.,

...'■. . --♦ Babylonian Insceiptions. — In examining a collection of the Egibi contract tables obtained from Babylon, Mr W. St. C. Boscawen has (the Athenseum says) discovered a smaU tablet dated in the seventh year bf Cyrus, King of Babylon, upon the edge of which tbere was written a short legend in the cursive Phoenician characters. This tabe. let is the first document in the extensivseries of Babylonian contract tablets in the British Musuem which has been found to bear a Phoenician inscription. Tablets obtained from Kalakh and Nineveh have often Phoenician legends attached to them. UntU the discovery here mentioned no such inscribed document had been obtained from. Babylonia. A coUection comprising a number of Babylonian inscriptions of the time of Nebuchadnezzar and the later Babylonian and Persian Kings has just been added to the Oriental department of the British Museum. These' objects were 'obtained By Mr Rassam during his last visit to the -East. Under the title of the " Diary of the Czar's Residence on the Danube in 1877," Count Sollohoub has pubUslied at St. Petersburg the first important contribution to the literature of the late war. Although the journal is not the actual v.-ork of the Emperor Alexander himself, it records his feelings during the most eventful period of the Turkish campaign, and is written by one whose constant personal attendance upon his Majesty enabled, him to obtain inspiration for many of its pages. The volume, which embraces the period between July 15 and December IG, is divided into eight chapters, whose headings — Tsarevitza, Pavlo, Biela, Gorni Studin, Tchaoush-Makala, Radonitza, Gorni Studin again, and Poradim — sufficiently indicate the scope of the work. In the early part of the diary great stress is laid upon an interview which General Tojstoi had with the Czar directly after the capture of Nicopol, in which the vanquisher of Hassan Pasha insisted vehemently upon the necessity of im mediately occupying Plevna. The presentiment upon the mind of Toolist that • this strategical point would become the thorn in the side of the army was so vivid, that af ler leaving the Czar's pavilion he went about the camp to all friends he met the waa-ningji, ' Prenez.. garde a Plevna.' . The counsel was, asis weirknbwn, disregarded by the self-opinionated subordinates of General Nekopoitaliinsky, aud the • mauvai^e -. auart-' cVlieure'' ensued^ .resulting, after the first 'battle of Plevna, in the Emperor passing twenty-eight days in a miserable, stifling, tent, -without- a- single night df unbroken •slumber. The interest of Count SoUohoub's volume mainly rests with the personal narrative he gives of the Emperor's emotions during these eventful days.