Austen Henry Layard, an English archa3olo-gist, born in Paris, during the temporary residence of his parents in that city, March 8, 1817. He is descended from a Huguenot family which emigrated from France after the revocation of the edict of Nantes. After spending a number of years in Florence, where he cultivated a taste for drawing, he commenced the study of law in England, but soon abandoned it to embark in a tour of exploration in the East. Leaving England in 1839, he traversed Albania and Roumelia; and after a brief residence in Constantinople he proceeded through Asia Minor to Syria, "scarcely leaving untrod one spot hallowed by tradition, or unvisited one ruin consecrated by history." Thence he went to Persia, and devoted some time to an examination of the remains of Susa, though without any important results. During this period he mastered the Arabic and some other oriental idioms, and so assimilated his habits, dress, and general appearance to those of the Arabs, that he was frequently taken for one of that race.

Passing through Mosul in 1842 on his return to Constantinople, he found that M. Botta, the French consul at the former place, was making excavations, under the direction of his government, in the neighboring mound of Kuyunjik; and he accordingly directed the attention of this gentleman to the great mound of Nimrud, about 30 m. below Mosul by the Tigris, as likely to contain remains of the utmost interest to the archasologist. The distance of the place, however, and its inconvenient position, prevented M. Botta from availing himself of this suggestion, and circumstances detained Mr. Layard in Constantinople and its neighborhood for several years. He however strongly cherished the hope of exploring the Assyrian ruins around Mosul, which he had cursorily examined while passing down the Tigris in 1840; and the gratifying results of M. Botta's excavations at Khorsabad in 1843-4 increased his anxiety to revisit the great mound of Nim-rud. Sir Stratford Canning, the British ambassador in Constantinople, agreed to defray for a limited period the expense of excavations in Assyria, and Layard eagerly embraced the opportunity.

Arriving in Mosul in November, 1845, he broke ground in the great mound of Nimrud on the 9th of that month; and from that period until April, 1847, with the exception of partial explorations at Koyunjik, opposite Mosul, and Kalah (or Kileli) Shergat, and occasional excursions into the adjacent regions, he prosecuted his labors assiduously at that place, bringing to light sculptures, bass-reliefs, hieroglyphics, specimens of glass and pottery, and other monuments of Assyrian civilization. His excavations were not pursued without considerable difficulty, caused by the superstition and intractable character of his Arab workmen, and the petty persecutions of the pasha of Mosul, from which he was finally relieved by a firman from the sultan authorizing him to remove the sculptures. During the progress of the excavations, through the interest of Sir Stratford Canning, the British museum advanced a small fund in aid of the undertaking; and in 1847 a number of cases of antiquities, including the colossal human-headed lions and bulls and the Nimrud obelisk, which had been floated down the Tigris to Bagdad, and there placed on shipboard, were received in England, and deposited in the Assyrian transept of the British museum.

In the same year Mr. Lay-ard returned home, and prepared his " Nineveh and its Remains " (2 vols. 8vo, 1840), accompanied by two folio volumes of illustrations and a volume of inscriptions in the cuneiform character. In 1848 he returned to Constantinople as attache to the embassy there; and in the latter part of 1849, at the invitation of the trustees of the British museum and under their direction, he resumed the excavations at Nimrud, which were carried on for about a year, after which he transferred the scene of his labors to Babylon. The excavations at this place produced no important result; but the discoveries at Nimrud, particularly the tablets containing Ninevitish records, were of great value. Returning to England, he published the results of his second expedition, under the title of "Discoveries among the Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon, with Travels in Armenia, Kurdistan, and the Desert" (2 vols. 8vo, 1853). Upon the retirement of Lord Pal-merston from the foreign office in 1851, Mr. Layard was appointed under secretary of state for foreign affairs, and soon after entered parliament as member for Aylesbury. He declined appointments under the succeeding administrations, preferring to give his attention chiefly to questions of eastern politics, and soon attracted attention in the house of commons as a debater.

In 1854 he visited the Crimea, and was subsequently instrumental in procuring the appointment of the committee of inquiry into the state of the British army before Sebastopol. He declined office under the Palmerston administration of 1855, and became a member of the " Administrative Reform Association." His motion embodying the views of this organization was rejected in the house of commons in June, 1855, by a decisive vote. At the general election of 1857 he was defeated at Aylesbury, and in 1859 at York, but was elected for Southwark in 1860. He devoted himself for some years to the preservation of the frescoes and paintings of the early Italian masters. Of these he made a series of elaborate drawings and tracings, a portion of which have appeared in the publications of the " Arundel Society." He became again under-secretary of state for foreign affairs in 1861, and retired from the office on the fall of Russell's second administration in 1866. Mr. Gladstone appointed him chief commissioner of works in 1868, and in 1869 minister plenipotentiary at Madrid, a post which he still holds (1874).