Note 348 — Chapter II · (continued 3)

In writing thus we allude chiefly to the restorations given by Mr. James Fergusson in The Palaces of Nineveh and Persepolis Restored (1 vol. 8vo. Murray), a work that was launched upon the world at far too early a date, namely, in 1851. Sir H., then Mr., Layard, had not yet published his second narrative (Discoveries in the Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon) nor the second series of Monuments of Nineveh, neither had the great work of MM. Place and Thomas on the palace of Sargon (a work to which we owe so much new and authentic information) appeared. In Mr. Fergusson's restorations the column is freely used and the vault excluded, so that in many respects his work seems to us to be purely fanciful, and yet it is implicitly accepted by English writers to this day. Professor Rawlinson, while criticising Mr. Fergusson in his text (The Five Great Monarchies, vol. i. p. 303, note 6), reproduces his restoration of the great court at Khorsabad, in which a colonnade is introduced upon the principle of the hypostyle halls of Persepolis. Professor Rawlinson would, perhaps, have been better advised had he refrained from thus popularizing a vision which, as he himself very justly declares, is quite alien to the genius of Assyrian architecture.