- however clearly they bear the traces of Greek influence in their style of design-yet represent only subjects of Etruscan manners or mythology; and the inscriptions which accompany them are invariably Etruscan. Again, if we turn to the bronze specula or mirrors-a branch of art peculiarly Etruscan - the figures and subjects are not unfrequently taken from the mythology or heroic legends of Greece; but the inscriptions at once prove them to be the works of native artists. Sometimes the names of Greek divinities or heroes appear on them in forms slightly altered, according to the genius of the Etruscan language; sometimes they are replaced by purely domestic appellatives. Thus the beautiful mirror engraved by Mr. Dennis*, as a frontispiece to his first volume, presents us with the Greek names of Apollo and Semele under their Etruscanised forms of APVLV and SEMLA, while Bacchus assumes his genuine Etruscan name of PHVPHLVNS. In like manner the national deities of Etruria, Tina, Sethlans, Turms, Losna, Turan-corresponding to the Jupiter, Vulcan, Mercury, Diana, and Venus of the Romans are constantly recurring on these mirrors, while they are never met with upon the painted vases. We have indeed every reason, à priori, to expect that the character of Etruscan art would be found most strongly impressed upon their works in bronze; for we know that it was for these that they were renowned in ancient times-while no writer of antiquity ever alludes to their painted vases. The bronze candelabra of Etruscan workmanship were celebrated even at Athens in the days of Pericles with what justice, we have ourselves the means of deciding, from the magnificent specimen discovered at Cortona a few years since. Nor were they incapable of works of a yet higher order: the celebrated She Wolf of the Capitol, the Chimæra, and the Orator of the Florence Gallery, confirm the testimony of Pliny to the excellence of their bronze statues; and the numbers of them with which their principal cities were peopled, are a proof how widely the feeling for the arts was once diffused there.

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Of another class of Etruscan works, frequently mentioned by ancient writers their statues in terra-cotta, with which the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus at Rome, as well as many others in that city, was adorned-no specimens have come down to us.

The reader must, however, be cautioned against receiving this as a specimen of the style of art usual on these mirrors; very few of which present outlines so graceful, or a design so closely approximating to the perfection of Greek art.

It is described by Mr. Dennis (vol. ii. p. 442.), and figured by Micali (Monumenti Inediti, pl. 9, 10.).

But we may gather from the terms in which they are spoken of, that they belonged to a very rude and early period - perhaps not unlike some of the archaic figures sculptured in stone, which may still be seen in the museums of Chiusi and Volterra. The cinerary urns and sarcophagi of those cities, on the contrary, belong, almost without exception, to a very late period, many of them being certainly not earlier than the days of the Roman empire a time when the whole character of Italian art had become so thoroughly penetrated and pervaded by Greek influences as to render it impossible to distinguish what was original from what was adventitious. Hence the sculptures with which they are adorned, however curious as illustrations of Etruscan manners and mythology, are of comparatively little value as specimens of Etruscan art.

We have dwelt thus long upon the remains of art found in Etruria, because the exaggerated estimate of Etruscan civilisation is principally owing to their great number and variety. On a calm review of the whole subject, we confess our inability to recognise the existence in Etruria of any such genuine and strongly-marked character of native art, as in the case of Egypt and Assyria; while the development of that more elevated and perfect style which is seen on some Etruscan monuments appears to us to be unquestionably due to the direct and long-continued influence of Greece. No doubt can be entertained of the proficiency of the Etruscans in all the more mechanical processes; or of the skill with which they availed themselves of the lessons they derived from foreign sources. But the vivifying spark of native genius was wanting - they produced skilful artificers, not great artists. They appear, indeed, to have departed at a very early period from the fixed and conventional rules of Oriental art-if, indeed, they ever acknowledged them; but it was not so much to evolve for themselves a national and characteristic style, as to borrow and adopt, more or less successfully, the improvements and characteristics of their more gifted contemporaries.

Something of the same character which distinguishes Etruscan art from that of Greece, on the one hand, and from the earlier schools of Egypt and Babylonia on the other, may be traced more or less through every thing we know of her civilisation. This seems to have occupied in all respects an intermediate position, between the rigid inflexibility of the Oriental type, and the energetic, self-developing mobility of the Hellenic race. Though not prepared to admit, with Mr. Dennis and many Italian antiquaries, the direct derivation of the Etruscan people from an Oriental source, or to receive as historically au

thentic the tradition of their emigration from Lydia, it is impossible to deny that there are unequivocal traces of the East in their social system, their religious creed, and in many minute points of manners and customs. But this surely may be the case, without the resemblances being such as to compel us to adopt the theory of a wholesale transplantation of the nation, or even of the dominant class, from any eastern country. On the contrary, the similarities of rites and customs, of habits and institutions, which have been pointed out between the Etruscans and various nations of the East, strike us as precisely of that description which can never be wanting where countries have originally derived their culture and their arts, directly or indirectly, from a common source. Whatever was the origin of the Etruscans, it is beyond dispute, we think, that one primordial element of their civilisation, as well as of their language, was derived from the Pelasgians; and when we consider how widely the Pelasgic race was at one period spread through Asia Minor, and around the shores of the Ægæan, it seems by no means difficult to account for resemblances in particular customs, between the Etruscans and tribes so distant as the Lydians, the Carians, or the Lycians, without admitting the necessity of a direct emigration.

The leading feature in Etruscan society, which points most strongly to an Oriental origin, is the omnipresence of their religious creed, and the power possessed by that priestly aristocracy who were the sole ministers and interpreters of its rites and tenets. Yet there is much to distinguish the hierarchical as well as the religious institutions of Etruria from those of Egypt or Asia. Already, at the earliest period, at which we have any knowledge of their social condition, all trace of an exclusively sacerdotal caste had disappeared. The chiefs and nobles of the land combined in their own persons the priestly character with that of the civil magistrate; and if they guarded with extreme jealousy the exclusive possession of the secrets and mysteries of their religion,-if they confined to their own class the functions of the Augur and the Haruspex-political expediency was at least as deeply concerned in this monopoly as religious superstition. The chief priesthoods of individual deities were indeed hereditary in particular families; but so they were in many instances among the Greeks of the earliest ages: and there is certainly no proof that the Lucumons of Etruria claimed the exclusive exercise of priestly functions upon any different grounds from those on which it was assumed by the primitive kings of Greece. On the other hand, the disappearance of the kingly office, the fact that the Etruscans had already lost that

monarchical constitution which is so eminently characteristic of all Oriental races, is in itself an argument of their social system, even if originally derived from the East, having undergone great modifications during the process of transmission. From the little which is to be gathered out of the testimonies of ancient authors-for on this point monuments can afford us no information-there is no evidence of any very marked separation of character between the political constitution of Etruria and that of Greece, during the period immediately following the general abolition of hereditary monarchy. Unfortunately for the Etruscans, they stopped short precisely at the point, from which their Hellenic neighbours started on their most brilliant career. Whether owing to some inherent defect in the national character, or to the absence of external stimulus, they allowed their priestly aristocracy to rivet upon them the double chains of religious and civil bondage. Henceforward their civilisation and culture bore the stamp of the thraldom under which they lived. Every thing which tended to advance the material comforts or luxuries of life was carried probably to as much perfection as in the most flourishing cities of Greece; in some respects, indeed, as in their sewers and roads, the Etruscans were in advance of their more intellectual contemporaries. An extensive commerce brought the products of other lands to the shores of Etruria; and in their splendour of apparel and luxurious habits of life the nobles of Tarquinii and Clusium might vie with the citizens of Sybaris or Agrigentum but from that freedom of thought and action, without which no nation ever attained to true greatness, the Etruscan people appear to have been effectually shut out. terrors of a dark and gloomy superstition lent their aid to support the power of an exclusive oligarchy; and if the dominant class in Etruria were not, as it has often been represented, an Oriental theocracy, the consequences to the national character were scarcely less injurious.

The

It was her system of spiritual tyranny,' says Mr. Dennis, 'that rendered Etruria inferior to Greece. She had the same 'arts, an equal amount of scientific knowledge, a more (?) ex'tended commerce. In every field had the Etruscan mind 'liberty to expand, save in that wherein lies man's highest delight and glory. Before the gate of that paradise where the intellect revels unfettered among speculations on its own 'nature-on its origin, existence, and final destiny, on its relation to the First Cause, to other minds, and to society in 'general-stood the sacerdotal Lucumo, brandishing in one hand the double-edged sword of secular and ecclesiastical

authority, and holding forth in the other the books of Tages, 'exclaiming, to his awe-struck subjects, "Believe, and obey!" Liberty of thought and action was as incompatible with the assumption of infallibility in the governing power in the days ' of Tarchon or Porsena, as in those of Gregory XVI.' At a later period, indeed, the strictness of the priestly regulations appears to have been considerably relaxed; but it was not till the spirit of the people had been broken, and their national pride humbled by foreign conquest. When the shackles were at length removed, it was too late for the limbs to expand.

Mr. Dennis takes, we think, a very just estimate of the civilisation of Etruria, when he compares it with that of the Mexicans or Peruvians. It was the result of a set system, not of 'personal energy and excellence; its tendency was stationary rather than progressive. * It had not the earnest germ ' of development,-the intense vitality which existed in Greece; it could never have produced a Plato, a Demosthenes, a Thucydides, or a Phidias.' It may be, indeed, objected, that we have no means of judging of what the Etruscans really achieved in the field of literature, because all traces of that literature have long since perished. But it is doubtful, if not more than doubtful, whether they ever possessed any thing worthy of the name. There is, it is true, frequent mention of the sacred or ritual books, which, in their oldest form, were ascribed to the fabulous Tages. To these awful volumes would be consigned the mysteries of their religious discipline, and its peculiar rites, -the rules which guided the Haruspex, or taught the signification of the thunder-storm, and all the knowledge of natural phenomena which they had acquired from the study of nature, incident to the constant practice of divination on so large a scale. It is reasonable, we admit, that the author of Cosmos should lament over the loss of the Fulgural books of these early meteorologists:-not that probably the College of Augurs at Tarquinii had better observatories, or made a more philosophical use of them than their successors at Rome. There must also have been some historical records of the past. Annals or chronicles of Etruscan history were still extant under the Roman empire; though there is no evidence that they were either carried back to an earlier period, or possessed any greater literary merit than the pontifical annals of Rome. It was from these materials, undoubtedly, that the imperial pedant Claudius compiled his voluminous work on Tuscan history. The loss of them is, of course, to be regretted, for they would have been among the greatest antiquarian curiosities. But what reason is there for believing that they had any pretensions of a higher value? When we

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