beings from beneath, come to sit in judgment on him for violating their repose.'-p. 321.

By far the most striking instance, however, of such success is that of Carlo Avolta, of Corneto :

He was conducting an excavation at Tarquinia, in partnership with the late Lord Kinnaird, when he was rewarded, for his expenditure of trouble and money, by an enjoyment which, he says, was the most exquisite of his life-the discovery of an Etruscan monarch, with his crown and panoply. He entirely confirmed the account which I had received in Rome of his adventure with the lucumo, on whom he gazed, for full five minutes, from the aperture above the door of his sepulchre. He saw him crowned with gold, clothed in armour, with a shield, spear, and arrows by his side, and extended on his stone bier. But a change soon came over the figure, it trembled, and crumbled, and vanished away; and, by the time an entrance was effected, all that remained was the golden crown and a handful of dust, with some fragments of the arms. Part of these became the property of Lord Kinnaird.'-p. 206.

From Veii Mrs. Gray transports her readers to the necropolis of Tarquinia, near the modern Corneto. Her own words will best convey some notion of the extent of this field for reseach :

The day after our arrival at Corneto we devoted to the tombs of Tarquinia, and we drove to the distance of about three miles from the town, until we found ourselves in the midst of a dreary moor, now called Monterozzi, which is all that remains above ground of the once superb necropolis, or burying-grouud. It is extremely rugged and uneven, and every now and then we saw traces of some little mounds, and, still more frequently, holes on the surface like the mouths of pits, sometimes openings like doors down into the ground, and occasionally flights of steps, half concealed.....Signor Carlo Avolta informed us that the necropolis of Tarquinia was computed to extend over sixteen square miles; and that, judging from the two thousand tombs which had of late years been opened, their number in all could not be less than two millions. What an extraordinary idea this gives of the dense population of ancient Etruria! for though the necropolis of Tarquinia may have been a favourite spot for family sepulchres, even beyond the pale of its own immediate citizenship, it is surrounded on all sides by cemeteries scarcely inferior in extent to itself Tuscania, and Volci, and Montalto, without naming Castel d' Asso, which we shall afterwards describe as having probably been the Westminster Abbey of Central Etruria.'— p. 159.

The Etruscans, in the form and construction of their tombs, were governed by local accidents of ground. At Castel d' Asso, where a valley with a precipitous bank was chosen, the rock was excavated into chambers, like those of Egypt, Petra, and Jehosophat. At Tarquinia, an extensive table-land being applied to

2 c2

the

the purpose, the tombs were conical mounds, for the most part artificially heaped up, but probably, where opportunity served, natural inequalities of ground were augmented or pared down to the requisite shape and angle. The apex was crowned by the crest or device of the family, and the base encircled by a wall of masonry. If the middle age battlement were removed from the tomb of Cæcilia Metella, and a conical mound raised upon the ancient structure, the whole would present the form of this class of tomb on a large scale.

'An Etruscan necropolis,' says our authoress,must have had a striking effect, crowded with such monumental mounds, crowned with lions or sphinxes, and based upon foundations of solid masonry, with doors all round, and having cope-stones adorned with lions, sphinxes, and griffins.'-p. 158.

The above computation of Signor Avolta, and Mrs. Gray's descriptions, would form much more reasonable foundation for a joint-stock excavation-company than those on which many seduc tive schemes have been raised. We must not, however, suppose that capital is all that is required, that the task of excavation is easy, or the reward certain. We are late in the field. Could we even claim to be the first who have been led there by desire of knowledge, or taste for the fine arts, still a passion older than these, older than Etruscan or Pelasgic rule, the auri sacra fames, has been beforehand with us, and an unplundered tomb is not the rule, but the exception. Nor was the reputation of these recesses for the precious metals their only attraction. At some periods of the Roman empire the finer Etruscan vases were perhaps as high in value in Rome as now. We cannot now fix the period of the spoliation, or identify the offender. Many tombs have doubtless been repeatedly ransacked. Avolta theorises that the very architects employed in their construction may have preserved the secret of the concealed entrance, and used for their own profit the open sesame' which was in their possession. It is more probable that the Roman conqueror may have begun the spoliation in the time of the republic: it is, we believe, certain that it was carried on to a great extent soon after the establishment of Chris tianity in the empire.

It would be beyond our scope and limits to enter into any detail of the wonders described in Mrs. Gray's pages. The paintings which remain are even of more interest than the transportable objects which enrich the museum of the collector; for they tell us even more of the usages, the games, the feasts, costume, and mode of living of the extinct people, and bear even more expressive witness to their belief in life and judgment beyond the grave. To give a single example of this-in de

scribing

scribing one of the first discovered and most remarkable of the painted tombs of Tarquinia, known by the name of the Grotta del Cardinale, Mrs. Gray says

'Another most remarkable frieze consists of a procession of souls to judgment, and among these one group in particular attracted our attention. It represented the soul of a person who had in life been of doubtful character, much both of good and evil being attributed to him, and in his case the nicely-balanced scales of justice trembled. He is dragged in a car before the judge by two winged genii, the one good and the other evil, who are contending for the exclusive possession of him. In the eagerness of dispute the car stops; they cannot draw it on, but remain stationary, to mark the uncertain reputation of the deceased. The evil genii are represented as black, and all the spirits wear a cothurnus. . The genii are all winged, and the souls, of which there are many, have no wings.'-p. 186.

In this instance the evil principle is embodied in human form, and only distinguished from his antagonist, or from the human subject of their contention, by colour; but in the Grotta del Tifone we are introduced to the very fiend of our own northern mythology. We cannot omit Mrs. Gray's description of this remarkable painting :

Our eyes were riveted on an extraordinary procession which occupied a small portion of the wall, to the right of the entrance. It is miserably injured, and will very soon be totally obliterated. It is a procession of dead, conducted by genii to their final abode of good or evil. The band is preceded by a good genius, as may be discovered from the serpents of eternity, which are twined round his head, and from the pleasing expression of his countenance. He bears a lighted torch. He is followed by a number of souls, and among them, two, a man and a woman, are distinguished for uncommon beauty. The very handsome and noble-looking youth is immediately followed by a monstrous fiend, n whom we recognise the most frightful development of the evil genius of Etruria, whose face and figure had been already familiar to us in scarabæi and vases. The eternal serpents encircled his head, and his face had the most frightful negro exaggeration with a brutish expression. One enormous claw was pouncing upon the shoulder of the unfortunate youth, while the hammer, the Etruscan badge of the angel of death, was raised in the other. Behind him was the figure, lamentably defaced, of a female of surpassing loveliness, and in her beautiful brow and eye the most intense anguish was depicted. I shall never forget her expression of unutterable woe. To her was attached an infernal guard, similar to him who had pounced upon the youth, his brows encircled with the same serpentine fillet, and his features and expression exaggerated negro and brutish, only of a dark brown colour instead of a deep black. .

Shakspeare's 'hang him, foul collier,' would apply with marvellous precision to the Etruscan Satan,

They

They must have been portraits; but whom did they represent, and why were they thus represented? What had they done, and why were they thus singled out, to be handed down for two-and-twenty ages as the prey of dæmons, and branded with the mark of reprobation ?'-p. 197.

Micali, who gives a coloured engraving of this painting, observes upon the impartiality with which judgment is awarded to all ranks beyond the grave. The soul which travels into Hades in its chariot, and which Micali evidently considers as answering to our English definition of a respectable man, viz., one who keeps a gig, meets with the same treatment as the humbler spirits. It may be worth mentioning that the interpretation of this painting, adopted by Mrs. Gray from Micali, is one which, in the case of other similar representations, is controverted by Inghirami and others, who consider Micali's evil genius to be the Infernal Mercury, conductor of the dead. Non nostrum tantas componere lites. Those who are curious in the matter may consult the dissertation on the seventh plate of Inghirami's voluminous work in quarto. The style of these figures is Greek, and differs in some details of execution from the generality of the sepulchral paintings; but the inscriptions attached are Etruscan, and therefore prove the antiquity, while they fail to remove the mystery, of the Dantesque story which Mrs. Gray thinks must have been selected to point a moral to the succeeding generations of some great Etruscan house.

It is lamentable to think that treasures of art and antiquity, such as these, should be suffered to remain for the most part neglected and unguarded, and that they are fast perishing. A few fac-similes decorate the walls of the Gregorian Museum, but its founder, who as a collector deserves much credit, as a sovereign does little for the preservation of the sepulchres themselves whence the treasures of which he is the worthy and enthusiastic possessor were extracted.

Mr. Michelet, the author of a lively summary of the history of Rome, an agreeable decoction of Niebuhr and the other authors of new versions, speaks of the Etruscans as a people who held in horror the nudity of the Greek gymnasium. If this were all on which we could rest a denial of their Greek origin, the negative evidence would hardly be conclusive. The tomb called the Chamber of the Inscriptions at Tarquinia not only exhibits naked female dancers, but in the horse-races there represented the riders are naked-although in the wrestling match the combatants are clothed. A more indubitable proof of difference between Greek and Etruscan social habits is the association of the two sexes on the same triclinium at the feast, which is consistent with Egyptian practice but not with Greek. The height of the painted

painted figures is usually from two to three feet, the fresco lately described is less in dimensions. Of the bright colours they appear to have used only the simple red, blue, and yellow, without mixing, as if they had combined them they could not have missed green, and would hardly have rejected it from their palette. Brown is rare. In some of these representations of races, the velarium, or occasional awning stretched over the spectators of the circus or theatre, distinctly appears, proving the invention to have been long anterior to the Romans, for whom it has been till now claimed.

Lucien Buonaparte is well known as one of the most successful excavators of Etruscan antiquities, though not the most retentive, for his acquisitions have been scattered by sale over all Europe. His own principality of Canino and the neighbouring site of the ancient Vulci have been the scenes of his operations. The mine has proved a rich one in all respects; but its chief interest of late has perhaps been derived from numerous discoveries of objects purely Egyptian. Among the articles of this class noticed by Mrs. Gray in the prince's collection at Musignano were ostrich eggs formed into cups, and painted with figures resembling those on the tombs of the Pharaohs, and small earthen vessels, resembling modern shooting-flasks, inscribed with hieroglyphics. These instances, and, we believe, many others, establish beyond all doubt the fact of intercourse and connexion with Egypt; but other evidence is required to demonstrate Micali's assumption that we must look to Egypt as the source of the early civilisation of Etruria. These proofs Micali finds in sufficient abundance for the overthrow of Lanzi, who in his day, while backing the pretensions of Greece against the East in general, was rash enough to challenge his adversaries to produce from Etruria a deity with four wings, or other similar monster of Phoenician origin. Four wings do I say,' writes Lanzi, 'show me one even with two!' The tombs had been by comparison imperfectly explored in Lanzi's time, and idols with any number of required wings have since been found in abundance, with many other indubitable symptoms of Egyptian and Oriental mythology. Vulci was a small but highly polished constituent portion of the Etruscan confederation, and the Prince of Canino, besides profiting by its ancient relations with Egypt, has been very fortunate in the articles of vases and gold ornaments. Probably no modern jeweller, unless possibly he were a Hindoo from Trichinopoly, could imitate a parure some thousands untold of years old in which the Princess used to appear at Roman fêtes and state occasions. The tomb called the Cucumella in this neighbourhood is worthy of notice for its peculiar architecture and arrangement, the mound of