number as well as the merit of their works will be amply proved by this single fact, that the town of the Volsinii, now Bolsena, was taken for the sake of the two thousand statues which it possessed. If at that time war was thus made not against the productions of art, but for the productions of art, they must have been held in high estimation in the opinion of the people of that age, and it is not, moreover, the sole occasion when ancient history furnishes us with the opportunity of remarking that the independence of nations was compromised by the very works which attest their superiority, and that thus genius became, contrary to its nature and its intention, fatal to the liberty of man. Now, if there existed in ancient times so great a number of Etruscan works, could it be possible that none of them should be preserved to the present day? This is not probable. Independently therefore of the monuments which bear Etruscan inscriptions, and which must be incontestably recognised, on this ground, as belonging to Etruscan art, we must also restore to it a great number, which do not bear the same attestation, but present the same character. The ancient Etruscans possessed indeed, like the Greeks, a religious system favourable to the development of the arts, by reason of the multiplicity of statues which this worship. required, and a form of government which was not the less propitious to it. Etruria was divided into twelve political associations or cities, each of which had its own chief called Lucumo; these Lucumones were, as it appears, subordinate, in a certain manner, to a superior or king, such as Porsenna seems to have been, who was so celebrated in the wars caused by the expulsion of the Tarquins. These twelve chiefs were elective as well as the superior chief. Hence the attachment which was felt by that nation towards the kings of Rome, who were themselves but elective princes: an attachment which would not be sufficiently justified by the interest of a single Etruscan town for only one of its citizens, but which is fully explained by a great national sympathy such as we have just pointed out. We have besides another proof in the hatred which the Etruscan nation bore to the kings of other states, to such a degree, that when the Veientes, their allies, had abolished among themselves the republican mode of government, to give themselves a master, the Etruscans not only renounced their alliance, but even declared war against them. Add to this that the government among the Etruscans seems to have been democratic. For questions of peace and war were only discussed in public assemblies of the twelve cities which composed the body of the nation, assemblies which were held at Bolsena in the temple of the goddess Volturna. These same associations of states, formed of the number of twelve: these same common deliberations, on important questions of public interest, held in the temples as if to place the national liberties under the support of religion; all these noble and beautiful institutions existed in like manner in Greece from the most ancient periods, and prove more and more the community of origin and belief, and the conformity of political establishments which existed among all these nations. They further prove that a political rule so favourable to the development of the arts, by the free exercise, by the brilliant scope which it affords to all the faculties of man, must have produced on either side the same results, and consequently that Greece and Etruria, placed in almost similar condition, must, all circumstances being similar, have advanced at an almost equal pace in the career of the arts. However, and it is an essential distinction which it is proper to establish in this place, if art was favoured among the Etruscans, almost to the same degree that it was among the Greeks, by political institutions, it was not entirely the same among both nations, with regard to religious institutions. The predominating feature of the Etruscan nation, a feature which had been the result of a natural disposition, and principally of a sacerdotal system very skilfully combined, was a gloomy and cruel superstition. The science of the aruspices, and the discipline of the augurs were, as is well-known, of Etruscan invention; it was from Etruria that this kind of superstition, reduced to a system carefully drawn up, was imported at an early period into Rome, where it became the religion of the state, and as such, intolerant and absolute; while in Greece, ideas, originally similar, but removed at an early period from the exclusive dominion of the priests, exercised, through the means of oracles and great national festivities, which continually placed the people in movement and the citizens in connection one with the other, -exercised, I say, no other influence, and acquired no other authority than that of popular legends and traditions. With this feature of the national character in ancient Etruria, a feature which emanates from a primitive disposition, strength ened by the sacerdotal system, we shall soon see how strongly impressed are all the monuments of this people. Hence the human sacrifices which were for a long time in use there, of which indeed many traces are to be found on these very monuments, and which, when this barbarous custom was entirely abolished, by the progress of civilisation, were replaced by small figures in terra cotta, called oscillæ, of which it is not impossible that some should have come down to us at the present day, among the number of Etruscan statues which remain. Hence the blood-stained combats of gladiators which were also of Etruscan origin, and which, after having been for a long time a game among that people, became a passion among the Romans. Hence, in fine, the terrible images made to inspire terror which are so frequently produced on the monuments of this people, the larvae, the phantoms, the monsters of all kinds, the Scyllæ, the Medusa, the furies with hideous visage, armed with hammers, spits, and instruments of torture, and always death represented with hideous features, and divine justice under avenging forms, while in Greece, milder manners, cultivated by a more humane religion, represented death under agreeable, smiling, and almost voluptuous images. It is not then doubtful that a mode of beholding things so different among the two nations, must have impressed quite a different character on the productions of their arts. The grace, which predominates over every other quality of Greek art, both as the essential attribute of that art, and as the faithful expression of the national genius, is replaced in the works of Etruscan art by a sort of coarseness and energy which evinces quite a different principle. A bony, robust, strongly developed system, muscles strongly marked, vigorous forms, attitudes almost always strained; in a word, a painful play of all the muscles, combined with an execution frequently hard or too marked, an expression almost always forced and unnatural, an over abundance, an exaggeration of anatomical details, these are the characteristics of the productions of the Etruscan style, which can be called originals; and you may see, in these few words, how much Etruscan art differs radically from Grecian and Egyptian art. For in the latter, everything is immoveable and in repose; in the other, not a limb which is not in action, not a muscle which is not in motion; in the one no appearance of anatomical studies; in the other a display of anatomical science. In Egypt we find always the same monumental position, the same parallel attitude, the same rectilinear execution. In Etruria, energetic action, even to violence, correct execution even to excess: bold effects, even fanciful. In a word, if the influence of a religious system, which had enchained man, his mind and his hands, is to be perceived in the works of Egyptian art, in those of Etruscan art, the influence of another sacerdotal system is to be perceived, which directing, in its interest and to its profit, the natural energy, and the national liberty of the people, occupied it on bloody games, on atrocious spectacles, and ever requiring from the artist none but terrible objects and images, had rendered, so to speak, art itself stern and hard like the nation, and inhuman like its religious worship. Let us apply these general observations to the monuments, setting aside from this discussion those belonging to architecture, which it is not our object, for the present, to include in this examination. Let us, however, say one word with regard to it; all that remains of Etruscan architecture, in the Cloaca Maxima and in the substructions of the Capitol at Rome, in the remains of the temple of Jupiter Latialis, at Mont Albano, in different constructions of the ancient villa of Tusculum recently discovered above Frascati, and especially in the walls of the Etruscan towns, Cortona, Fiesole, and Volterra, a great portion of which still remains, all is marked with the same character of strength, power, and energy, which distinguishes the monuments of this people, and which are characteristics of its genius. These walls are built of stones of prodigious size, joined without cement, and cut square, but not in regular courses; in which they differ from the walls called Cyclopean, which are built of irregular blocks. The arches, which are still to be found in some of these edifices, as in those of the Cloaca Maxima, a magnificent gate at Perugia, and another at Volterra, are also built without cement, with wonderful accuracy and precision in their construction. At the sight of these monuments one cannot but deem the spirit of the people who raised them as that of a people capable of the highest efforts of energy and valour. The Greeks also built in the same system with rectangular stones and joined without cement. It is in this style that their most beautiful temples are built, which still brave the effects of time and the attacks of the barbarian. But the walls of these ancient towns which still exist, those of Mycenae, which I have con not seen, and those of Pæstum, of Tauromenium, of Syracuse, are built of blocks of smaller size, yet with wonderful care and precision. Solidity is above all conspicuous in these constructions of the Greeks and Etruscans, but even in this, as in everything else, this quality is impressed with the peculiar character of each people: among the Etruscans it was solidity with all that could evince strength; among the Greeks it was solidity with all the grace it could call forth. There is a monument of Etruscan architecture so singular in its kind, and which so manifestly bore the impress of the genius of this people, energetic to excess, and bold even to a degree of wildness, that I ought to devote a few words to it although this monument no longer exists except in history, and which has even become a kind of historic problem. I mean the tomb of Porsenna, of which Pliny has left us a description so wonderful that he himself seems to throw a doubt upon its struction. Monuments bearing an analogy to this which still exist, such as the presumed tombs of the Curiatii at Albano at some miles from Rome, tend however to prove that the description of Pliny is traced, if not after a real monument, at least after the traditions and customs of genuine Etrurian origin; and a skilful antiquary has judiciously availed himself of them, in support of a supposed restoration of this tomb of Porsenna, which unquestionably ought to be restored to the domain of the history of art, in the same manner as so many other monuments which had been formerly thrown back into the realms of fable. Plastic, or statuary in clay, must have been, from the facility of its execution, from the very nature of the material, so common and so abundant, the first branch of art which was cultivated among the Etrurians; it is even said that this people were the inventors of it. But one thing is certain, that Rome, in the first five centuries of its existence, knew no other ornaments for its temples than Etruscan statues, bassi relievi, and friezes, in baked clay. Such was the statue of Jupiter Capitolinus executed under Tarquinius Priscus, and other statues of Pluto and Hercules, of the same period and from the same hand; such were all those gods of clay, dii fictiles of the ancient Romans, wretched gods in appearance, but in reality deserving of respect, whose noble poverty and august rudeness were opposed with so much advantage by the old republicans, like Cato, to those new gods of gilt bronze which had not checked the corruption of morals, and the fall of the state; and when |