Itineraries of Antoninus or Theodosius, or by the records of modern archæologists.'-Vol. i. p. 77. We cannot, of course, expect to enlist in antiquarian and classical pursuits those among the English visitors to the Eternal City who seem determined to transplant the pleasures of Melton and Ascot to the Italian soil: whose fondest triumph it is to startle the august and solemn scene with their races and foxhunts, awakening unwonted clamours among the sepulchres of the Appian Way, and the ruined aqueducts of the Campagna.' But there are not wanting among us spirits kindred to those of Layard, Fellowes, Curzon, Gell: spirits bent on venturous enterprise and exciting discovery: and only deterred by the fallacious, yet far from uncommon belief, that Italy is a country so thoroughly beaten by travellers, that it no longer offers a fair hope of novelty in research. 'Yet the truth is,' says our author, that vast districts of the peninsula, especially the Tuscan, Roman, and Neapolitan States, are to the archæologist a terra incognita. Every monument on the high roads is familiar, even to the fireside traveller; but how little is known of the bye-ways! Of the swarms of travellers who yearly traverse the country between Florence and Rome, not one in a hundred leaves the beaten track to visit objects of antiquity. Now and then an excursion is made to Chiusi; or a few may run from Civita Vecchia to Corneto, to visit the painted tombs: but not a tithe of that small number continue their route to Vulci or Toscanellastill fewer to Cosa. Parties occasionally make a picnic to the site of Veii; but, considering the proximity to Rome, the convenience of transit, and the intense interest of the spot, the number is very limited. 'The wide district on the frontiers of the Tuscan and Roman States is so rarely trodden by the foot of a traveller, even of an antiquary, that it can be no matter of surprise that relics of ancient art should exist there, utterly unknown to the world: gazed at only with stupid astonishment by the peasantry, or else more stupidly unheeded. In a country almost depopulated by malaria, inhabited only by shepherds and husbandmen, the most striking monuments may remain for ages unnoticed. Thus it was with the magnificent temples of Pæstum. Though they had reared their mighty columns to the sunbeams for at least three-and-twenty centuries, isolated in an open plain where they were visible for many a league, and standing on the sea-shore, where they must have served for ages as a landmark to the mariner; yet their very existence had been forgotten by the world, till in the middle of the last century a Neapolitan painter discovered them afresh, rescuing them from an oblivion of fifteen hundred years.'-Vol. i. p. 481. But surely the valuable discoveries at Veii, Vetulonia, and Sovana, all made since Mrs. Gray's visit to Etruria,-to which we will now invite the reader's attention, will supply a powerful incentive to fresh investigation. The greater part of the land around Veii, once the mightiest of Etruscan cities, belongs to the Queen of Sardinia, who lets it out in the season to excavators, mostly dealers in antiquities at Rome, who rifle the tombs of everything convertible into cash, and cover them in immediately with earth. The solitary tomb which remains open in this Necropolis, was discovered in the winter of 1842-3; it is the property of an antiquary renowned for his excellent taste, the Cavaliere Campana, whose well-known liberality has made it accessible to every traveller, with its relics and furniture inviolate. Its virgin fame, its unique character, its preeminent antiquity, coeval, in Cavaliere Campana's opinion, with the birth of Rome, entitle it to a more detailed notice than space will allow us for its sister tombs. The extraordinary paintings on the inner wall at once arrest the traveller's eye, to the exclusion of the vast jars and articles of bronze, lying on benches or standing on the floor. Were there ever,' asks Mr. Dennis, more strangely devised, more grotesquely designed figures? Was there ever such a harlequin scene as this? Here is a horse with legs of the most undesirable length and tenuity, chest and quarters far from meagre, but a barrel pinched in like a lady's waist. His colour is not to be told in a word-as Lord Tolumnius' chestnut colt, or Mr. Vibenna's bay gelding. His neck and forehand are red, with yellow spots his head black-mane and tail yellow-hind-quarters and near-leg black-near fore-leg corresponding with his body, but off-legs yellow, spotted with red. His groom is in deep-red livery-that is, he is naked, and such is the colour of his skin. A boy of similar complexion bestrides the horse, and another man precedes him, bearing a hammer, or perhaps a double-headed axe, upon his shoulder; while on the croup crouches a tailless cat, parti-coloured like the steed, with one paw familiarly resting on the boy's shoulder. Another beast, similar in character, but with a dog's head, stands beneath the horse.'-Vol. i. p. 51. Other parts of the wall are chequered with similar devices, strongly resembling the animals represented on the most archaic vases in quaintness and peculiarity of form, and probably imbued with some mystic or symbolic import; for the boys on horseback may fairly be supposed to be emblems of the passage of the soul into another state of existence, from the acknowledged prevalence of the type on cinerary urns of the later style, and the figure with the threatening hammer seemingly portrays the Etruscan Charon. It is probably one of the earliest efforts of native Etruscan art: for, though the stiffness of the figures and the rigidity of the outline forcibly remind us of Egyptian paintings, the features, unlike those in the Tarquinian sepulchres, do not present any of the peculiarities of the Coptic race: the sphinx is not Egyptian, for it is winged: and the ornamental border of lotus flowers, emblematic of immortality, is the only element in the scene suggestive of the Nile. The relics of a city which Mr. Dennis, in common with many of the leading antiquaries at Rome, both German and Italian, identifies with the site of the lost Vetulonia, were discovered by Signor Pasquinelli, in May 1842, while he was forming a road from Magliano to the Saline, at the mouth of the Albegna. The ground on the line of the projected route being low and swampy, and the higher land being a soft friable tufa, the engineer was at a loss for materials, till he chanced to uncover some large blocks beneath the surface, easily recognised as the foundations of an ancient wall. He found them range in an unbroken line, which readily enabled him to trace out the periphery of a city between four and five miles in circuit. The site was evidently Etruscan, for neither statues nor marble columns, as among Roman ruins, were discovered: but the relics were chiefly bronze and pottery, especially the common black ware of Chiusi and Volterra: among others, a lion of peperino, a little bronze idol with a sickle in his hand, all of the most archaic style, and a venerable packing needle, with eye and point uninjured, which had possibly served some Etruscan worthy in preparing for his travels to the Fanum Voltumnæ, the Parliament of the Lucumones. The characteristics of the site certainly correspond with the requisites of the classic Vetulonia far more closely than Castiglione Bernardi, the spot assigned by Inghirami and Ambrosch, fourteen or fifteen miles from the sea. It is described by the writers of antiquity, and especially by Silius Italicus, as a city of great power and magnificence, with strong claims to rank among the Twelve: with hot springs in its neighbourhood, which Mr. Dennis thinks he has recognised in those at Telamonaccio, two or three hundred yards only from the sea. And, above all, its maritime character, implied by Pliny, and established by a monument,' discovered at Cervetri, in 1840, harmonises with the position of the ruins on the first heights that rise above the level of the marine swamp, nearly at the same distance from the port of Telamone as Tarquinii lies from its harbour Gravisca-a_position which indicates a compromise between security and convenience: for, apart from maritime purposes, the founders would surely have built further inland, at once for the sake of a stronger site, and for greater elevation above the insalubrious atmosphere of the Maremma. Several painted tombs have been opened in the neighbour 1 A bas-relief, bearing the devices of three Etruscan cities-Tarquinii, Vulci, and Vetulonia. The latter, which is indicated by the inscription, Vetulonenses, is symbolised by a naked man with an oar on his shoulder, and holding a pine-cone, which he seems to have just plucked from a tree over his head. Dr. Braun, the learned Secretary of the Archæological Institute, says 'That this figure represents Neptune, seems to me beyond a doubt; it is shown not only by the attribute in his hand, but also by the tree, sacred to that Deity, which stands at his side. However this may be, no one can presume to deny that the figure bearing an oar indicates a maritime city, such as Pliny in truth implies Vetulonia to have been. -Dennis, vol. i. p. 303. hood, and, as usual, have since been re-closed with earth, when once rifled of their treasures. There is, doubtless, much to invite excavators to the spot. The accidental discovery of the sepulchral curiosities at Sovana, and of the relics imbedded for ages in the Lake of Falterona, near Florence, only multiply the inducements to further research. The former were disclosed to the antiquarian world in the spring of 1842, by Mr. Ainsley, our author's enterprising fellow-traveller, who, on exploring the surrounding ravines, detected a long range of tombs with rock-hewn façades like those of Norchia and Castel d'Asso: only that they were unique in combining the characteristics of remote ages and countries of Egypt, Greece, Etruria and Rome with a prodigal variety elsewhere unknown. The novel and striking features peculiar to the site invest the discovery with special interest and importance; but we will not fatigue the reader with their details, which are fully developed in the twentysixth chapter of Mr. Dennis's first volume. It is, however, only fair to warn him of the perils which the traveller must encounter in a visit to the spot. So dense are the tangled thickets that Mr. Ainsley was compelled to get the peasants to pioneer him a way from one monument to another with their wood-bills: the slopes are furrowed with yawning pits: and the ground is kept moist and slippery with the overhanging foliage, so that a false step would, in a double sense, prove a step into the grave. But a subtler foe lurks in the malaria, which year by year stalks through this skeleton of former greatness. Along its silent street reigns a monotonous death-like calm: its houses are mostly ruined and tenantless: even on a fête-day, during the healthy season, scarcely a soul, says Mr. Dennis, was visible, and the few who met his eye had hardly energy even for wonder at the novel apparition of a stranger. But perhaps the most singular discovery was that made in the summer of 1838, in the Lake of Monte Falterona, one of the loftiest of the Tuscan mountains, whence the Arno takes its rise, and from whose summit, says Ariosto, both seas are visible, Here we must allow our author to tell his own story:— 'On the same level with the source of the Arno is a lake, on whose banks a shepherdess, sauntering in dreamy mood, chanced to cast her eye on something sticking in the soil. It proved to be a little figure in bronze. She carried it home: and taking it in her simplicity for the image of some holy man of God, set it up in her hut to aid her private devotions. The parish priest, paying a pastoral visit, observed this mannikin, and inquired what it was. "A saint," replied the girl; but, incredulous of its sanctity, he carried it away with him. The fact got wind in the neighbourhood of Stia del Casentino, and some of the inhabitants agreed to make researches on the spot. A single day sufficed to bring to light a quantity of such images and other articles in bronze, lying confusedly on the shores of the lake, just beneath the surface. They then proceeded to drain the lake, and discovered in its bed a prodigious quantity of trunks of fir and beech trees, with their roots uppermost, as if they had been overthrown by some mighty convulsion of nature; and on them lay many similar figures in bronze. They were mostly human figures of both sexes, many of them of gods and penates, varying in size from two or three to seventeen inches in height. But how came they here? was the question which puzzled every one to answer. At first, it was thought they had been cast into the lake for preservation, during some political convulsion, or invasion, and afterwards forgotten. But further examination proved them to be chiefly of a votive character-offerings at some shrine, for favours expected or received. Most of them had their arms extended, as if in the act of presenting gifts; others were clearly representations of beings suffering from disease, especially one who had a wound in his chest, and a frame wasted by consumption or atrophy: and there were, moreover, a number of decided ex-votosheads and limbs and various portions of the human body: beside many images of domestic animals, also of a votive character. All this implied the existence of a shrine on the mountain, surrounded, as the trees seemed to indicate, by a sacred grove, like that of Feronia or Soracte, and of Silvanus at Cære; and it seemed that, by one of those terrible convulsions to which this land has from age to age been subject, the shrine and grove had been hurled down into this cavity of the mountain. It is well known that such catastrophes have in past ages occurred in Monte Falterona. No traces, however, of a shrine, or of any habitation, were discovered with the relics in this lake. . . There were some articles of very different character mixed with these figures, the existence of which, on such a site, was still more difficult to explain. Such were fragments of knives and swords, and the heads of darts, all of iron, in great numbers, not less, it is said, than two thousand; besides great chains, and fibula, with fragments of the better known coinage.'-Vol. ii. pp. 109, 110. We are indebted to the author for the following account of the solution of this mystery, proposed by Dr. Emil Braun, the learned Secretary of the Archæological Institute at Rome: : · He (Dr. Braun) observes that the trees found in the lake had been completely deprived of vitality, the water having absorbed all the resinous parts which they possessed when green. He considers that the convulsion or dislocation of the mountain, which hurled them into this spot, must have occurred long prior to the period when the bronzes and other articles were here deposited, otherwise the latter would have been buried beneath the former, and not regularly set around the lake. He thinks that the lake was formed at the time when the landslip occurred, and that its waters acquired a medicinal quality from the trees it contained, the parts which gave them that virtue being identical with those from which modern chemistry extracts creosote. Now, the diseases which are shown in the ex-votos are just such, he observes, as are remediable by that medicine. The styptic water of Pinelli, so celebrated for stopping the hæmorrhage of recent wounds, has a base of creosote; and hither, it seems, flocked crowds of wounded warriors, who left their weapons in acknowledgment of their cure. The virtues of the same medicine, in curing the attacks of phthysis, are now recognised by medical men of every school; and by patients bouring under this disorder the lake seems to have been especially quented. Creosote also is a specific against numerous diseases to which e fair sex is subject: and such appear, from the figures, to have resorted |