LAYARD, SIR AUSTEN HENRY British author and diplomatist, the excavator of Nineveh, was born in Paris on March 5, 1817, son of Henry P. J. Layard, of the Ceylon civil service. Much of his boyhood was spent in Italy, where he received part of his schooling, and acquired a taste for the fine arts and a love of travel; but he was at school also in England, France and Switzerland. After spending nearly six years in a solicitor's office in London, he started in 1839 with the intention of making an overland journey across Asia to Ceylon, where he was to enter the civil service. But, after wandering for many chiefly in Persia, he returned in 1842 to Constantinople, where Sir Stratford Canning employed him in various unofficial diplo matic missions in European Turkey. In 1845, encouraged and assisted by Canning, Layard left Constantinople to explore the ruins of Assyria. This expedition fulfilled a design which he had formed, when, during his earlier travels in the East, he had seen the ruins of Nimrud on the Tigris, and the great mound of Kuyunjik, near Mosul, already partly excavated by Botta.
Layard remained in the neighbourhood of Mosul, excavating at Kuyunjik and Nimrud, and investigating the condition of various tribes, until 1847. Returning to England in 1848, he pub lished Nineveh and its Remains: with an Account of a Visit to the Chaldaean Christians of Kurdistan, and the Y ezidis, or Devil worshippers; and an Inquiry into the Manners and Arts of the Ancient Assyrians (2 vols., 1848-49), accompanied by Illustra tions of the Monuments of Nineveh (1849). After a few months in England, Layard returned to Constantinople as attache to the British embassy, and, in Aug. 1849, started on a second expedition, in the course of which he investigated the ruins of Babylon and the mounds of southern Mesopotamia. His record of this expedition, Discoveries in the Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon (1855), was ac companied by a volume of illustrations, A Second Series of the Monuments of Nineveh. During these expeditions Layard sent to England the splendid specimens which now form the greater part of the collection of Assyrian antiquities in the British Museum. Apart from the archaeological value of his work in identifying Kuyunjik as the site of Nineveh, these two books of Layard's are among the best-written books of travel in the language.
Layard entered parliament for Aylesbury in 1852. He was for a few weeks under-secretary for foreign affairs, but afterwards freely criticized the government, especially in connection with army administration. He was present in the Crimea during the war, and was a member of the committee appointed to inquire into the conduct of the expedition. In 1855 he refused from Lord Palmerston an office not connected with foreign affairs, was elected lord rector of Aberdeen university, and on June 15 moved a resolution in the House of Commons (defeated by a large majority) declaring that in public appointments merit had been sacrificed to private influence and an adherence to routine. Defeated at Aylesbury in 1857, he visited India to investigate the causes of the Mutiny. He unsuccessfully contested York in 1859, but was elected for Southwark in 186o, and from 1861 to 1866 was under-secretary for foreign affairs In the successive adminis trations of Lord Palmerston and Lord John Russell. In 1866 he was appointed a trustee of the British Museum, and in 1868 chief commissioner of works in W. E. Gladstone's government and a member of the Privy Council. He retired from parliament in 1869, on being sent as envoy extraordinary to Madrid. In 1877 he was appointed by Lord Beaconsfield ambassador at Constanti nople, where he remained until Gladstone's return to power in 188o, when he finally retired from public life. In 1878 he received the G.C.B. Layard's manner was brusque, and his advocacy of the causes which he had at heart, though always perfectly sincere, was vehement to the point sometimes of recklessness. Layard retired to Venice, where he devoted much of his time to collect ing pictures of the Venetian school, and to writing on Italian art. On this subject he was a disciple of his friend G. Morelli, whose views he embodied in his revision of F. Kugler's Handbook of Painting, Italian Schools (1887). In 1887 he published, from notes taken at the time, a record of his first journey to the East, entitled Early Adventures in Persia, Susiana and Babylonia. An abbreviation of this delightful book was published in 1894, shortly after the author's death, with a brief introductory notice by Lord Aberdare. Layard died in London on July 5,