BOOKS.

DENNIS'S CITIES AND CEMETERIES. OF ETRURIA.* Tire primary object of Mr. Dennis in this elaborate work, is to call the attention of the traveller in Italy to the antiquities of Etruria, and to furnish him with a guide to the whole of them, or to any particular place that may lie in his route. The necessity for some such book lies in the fact that the more learned works which treat of the ancient Etruscans are disquisitional, dry, and often confined to particular subjects or places. Mrs. Hamilton Gray's "Sepulchres of Etruria," the only popular work on the subject in English, is incomplete ; because there are " many sites of high interest which she has not described, and on some of those which she has treated, many remarkable monuments have been subsequently discovered." Completeness in every point is the claim of Mr. Dennis to public atten- tion. He has frequently visited every city and cemetery of Etruria ; he describes their existing ruins, or the articles that have been found there, at a length proportioned to their existing condition or antiquarian in- terest. To each city he attaches a sketch of its ancient history, terse, clear, and spirited ; which is useful to the historical student, as bringing facts together in a concise form, that few can carry in their heads, while the account is essential to the general visiter who would usefully study the scene before him. Mr. Dennis also accompanies the tourist on his road to the place ; leads him by the most striking ap- proaches ; carries him to the best points of view as well as to all the antiquities ; and introduces him to the local cicerones, correcting their traditions or their tales. He narrates the discovery of the most re- markable tombs and their contents, transferring to an appendix any topic which may require disquisitional elucidation ; and last, not least, he escribes the kind of accommodation the traveller will meet with in his visits to these often all but deserted places, and the persons who will urnish it. In short, a guide-book more complete, comprehensive, or in- orming on all points, it would be difficult to find ; whether the tourist tends to devote himself to the cities and cemeteries of Etruria with a iew to study the history, arts, and institutions of that remarkable peo- le, or whether he only intends to make a flying visit to Veil or Fidenx, hich may be done in a day, or as regards Fide= in a few hours from

me.

But though The Cities and Cemeteries of Etruria is primarily a :.'de-book, it is also much more. Mr. Dennis's visit to each place is a pecies of tour in itself. He not only narrates his journey thither, but escribes the scenery as he passes along; he presents the site of the city

it now appears; he exhibits the tombs as they are and as they were; he owe animation into what is often lifeless, by introducing the guide, the Bantry, the little adventures that occur to him in exploring, and tven by atmospheric accessories. He thus individualizes what is too often 4y generalization, but without any loss of breadth or information. For tontinnons reading the book, no doubt, may become same, because the node of treating each city is identical, the variation consisting only in the nore or less of subjects which the remains themselves present; and long Inscriptions are ever apt to run into literal enumeration. The writer's im, however, is not for continuous reading, but for particular study.

The arts, the social customs, and the institutions of the ancient Etras-

ans, so far as these have been recorded by history or as the learned have een able to deduce them from their remains, are exhibited in these vo- tines, either in the review of the whole subject which prefaces the work, r in the examination of particular cities or sepulchres. Throughout, Mr. lauds exhibits in these antiquarian disquisitions an extensive knowledge r his subject, a sound judgment in deciding between conflicting opinions ithout dogmatically advancing his own, and zeal enough in favour of it Etruscans to give warmth to his treatment without falling into that oesided advocacy which frequently attends the earnest inquirer in a par- cedar branch of antiquity, especially if it possesses anything of myste- oas grandeur, as is certainly the case with Etruria. Without attempt- ig to settle the origin or to inquire minutely into the history of the truscans, Mr. Dennis has penetrated the spirit of their institutions. He es, in spite of all their greatness, their power, and their advance in civi- !ation of a certain kind, that their system was oligarchical and benumb- g.;. that it checked human advancement, not only in government, in !lines, and in freedom, but that it fettered art and mind in the chains convention. A noble priesthood formed a theocracy of a peculiar kind, Inch held in its hands a power more terrible than the Church of Rome Flog the darkest ages. The priests of the Romish Church only over- td and claimed to interpret the Scriptures : the ancient Etruscans esta- shed a theocratic rule ; they demanded for the ruling caste an authority far divine that the established state of things was divinely constituted d could not be altered ; by monopolizing all secular and priestly power, es virtually reduced the people to a state of serfdom ; and their practice augury, even more than the establishment of oracles, general through- t the ancient world, gave them the power of making a text appli- Ide to the occasion, as well as of interpreting it. Various speculations have been broached as to the origin of the Etrns- Da: Some look to Asia Minor, some to Egypt, a few German en- masts to their fatherland, others to Assyria, and others, among whom Ws. Hamilton Gray, to Assyria with an Egyptian graft. The basis their fine arts seems evidently Egyptian, with, in later ages, some kiwi infusion. The last might readily be derived from the eco-Italian colonies, or from Greece direct in the palmy days of &rus- t trade and maritime power, or from some Greek settlement in una itself. The original style of genuine Etruscan has an Egyptian raeter ; the paintings in Etruscan tombs is a practice analogous to t of Egypt : but this would not of itself prove that Etruria was co- ned from the banks of the Nile, though it would be an argument in Dur of a widespread style of civilization anterior to all recorded his- The Cities and Cemeteries of Etruria. By George Dennis. In two volumes. Fub- d by Manny. not much if any better than that of the ancient serfs of the Romans or Etrurians.

" Every time I visit Yell I am struck with the rapid progress of destruction. Nibby and Gell mention many remains which are no longer visible. The site has less to show on every succeeding year. Even masonry, such as the pier of the bridge over the Fosso di Formello, that from its massiveness might defy the pil- ferings of the peasantry, is torn to pieces, and the blocks removed to form walls or houses elsewhere; so that ere long I fear it will be said of Veil, Her very rains have perished'--etiam periere mines. " Occasionally, in my wanderings on this site, I have entered, either from cu- riosity or for shelter, one of the capanne scattered over the downs: these are tall, conical, thatched huts, which the shepherds make their winter abode; for in Italy, the low lands being generally unhealthy in summer, the flocks are driven to the mountains about May, and as soon as the great heats are past are brought back to the richer pastures of the plains. It is a curious sight, the interior of a ca- panne, and affords an agreeable diversity to the antiquity-hunter. A little bold- ness is requisite to pass through the pack of dogs, white as new-dropped lambs, but large, and fierce as wolves, which, were the shepherd not at hand, would tear in pieces whoever might venture to approach the hut; but with one of the pecoraj for a *car, iidthing is to be feared. The capanne are of various sizes. One entered-not far from Veil was thirty or forty feet in diameter, and fully as high, propped in the centre by two rough masts, between which a hole was left in the roof for the escape of smoke. Within the door lay a large pile of lambs—there might be a hundred—killed that morning and already flayed; and a number of shepherds were busied in operating on the carcases of others; all of which were to be despatched forthwith to the Roman market. Though a fierce May sun blazed without, a huge fire roared in the middle of the hut; but this was for the sake of the ricotta, which was being made in another part of the capanna. Here stood a huge cauldron, full of boiling ewes-milk: in a warm state this curd is a delicious jelly, and has often tempted me to enter a airtime in quest of it, to the amaze- ment of the pecoraj, to whom it is vilior alga.' Lord of the cauldron, stood a man dispensing ladlesfaLl of the rich simmering mess to his fellows, as they brought their bowls for their morning's allowance; and he varied his occupation by pouring the same into certain small baskets; the serous parts running off through the wicker, and the residue caking as it cooled. On the same board stood the cheeses, previously made from the cream. In this but lived twenty-five men, their nether limbs clad in goat-skins, with the hair outwards, realizing the satyrs of ancient fable: but they had no nymphs to tease nor shepherdesses to woo; and never ' sat an day,

Playing on pipes of corn, and verging love To amorous Phillida.'

They were a band of celibats, without the vows. In such huts they dwell all the year round, flaying lambs or shearing sheep, living on bread, ricotta, and water, very rarely tasting meat or wine, and sleeping on shelves ranged round the but like berths in a ship's cabin. Thus are the dreams of Arcadia dispelled by realities."

Here is another sketch, comparing the ancient and the modern in a more melancholy point of view.

"Etruria was of old densely populated, not only in those parts which are still inhabited, but also, as is proved by remains of cities and cemeteries, in tracts now desolated by Malaria, and relapsed into the desert; and what is now the fen or the jungle, the haunt of the wild boar, the buffalo, the fox, and the noxious reptile, where man often dreads to stay his steps, and hurries away as from a plague-stricken land- . Bus vacuum, quod non habitat, Mai nocte coacta,

invites '—

of old yielded rich harvests of corn, wine, and oil, and contained numerous cities,, mighty and opulent, into whose laps commerce poured the treasures of the East, and the more precious produce of Hellenicgenius. Most of these ancient sites are now without a habitant, furrowed yearly by the plough, or forsaken as unprofit- able wildernesses ; and such as are still occupied, are, with few exceptions, mere, phantoms of their pristine greatness—mean villages in the place of populous cities. On every hand are traces of bygone civilization, inferior in quality, no doubt, to that which at present exists, but much wider in extent, and exerting far greater influence on the surrounding nations and on the destinies of the world. The glory has verily departed from Etruria."

The following estimate of the civilization of ancient Etruria is in the main just, but it perhaps covertly assumes too much as regards the mass; unless, indeed, the great masses in all the ancient states were much upon a par, and perhaps better treated in despotic than free countries, as is gene- rally the case with slaves in the modern world.

"If we measure Etruria by the standard of her own day, we must ascribe to her a high degree of civilization, second only to that of Greece. It differed, deed, as the civilization of a country under despotic rule will sways differ from that of a free people. It resided in the mass rather than in the individual: it was the result of a set system, not of personal energy and excellence; its ten dency was stationary rather than progressive; its object was to improve the phy- tory, whose highest perfection was attained in Egypt. On the other band, minor deviations from Egyptian practices, prove little against an Egyptian origin. The customs of colonists are modified by the climate and country in which they settle. Egyptians in a mountainous land would hardly have erected the Pyramids or invented geometry.

A more remarkable question than whence the Etruscans came, is how they formed or acquired their national character. No nation out of Italy ever met the Romans on such equal terms in arms as to inspire a respect that induced an amalgamation, or in any way influenced the Roman cha- racter and institutions. The Grecian influence was wholly intellectual; the morals and conduct of the Greeks were topics of jest or scorn. From the East and Egypt the Romans borrowed nothing but vices, and that when their own empire was declining. Unless facts and learned conclu- sions lie, Etrurian influence was dominant at Rome. It was visible in her religion, her constitution, her forms, her costume, her respect for law : that steady inflexibility, which more than any single thing con- tributed to her greatness, was cultivated by if not produced from the Etruscan rigidity. Whence that ancient people derived the innate force of character to dominate over a race like the Romans, is a puzzle ; and the only, or at least the best evidence that we have met with, of a Northern origin.

Speculations of this nature are not of very frequent occurrence in the volumes before us ; those which occur are chiefly incidental, arising out of the particular facts that turn up ; but many of the facts or arguments are suggestive of this kind of hypothesis. Description and exposition are the chief features of Mr. Dennis's book : description of nature and the remains of art ; exposition of manners, habits, and even institutions or history as deduced from those remains; both classes of composition being relieved by sketches of modern Italian life in its classes or individuals. The following is a picture of shepherd existence near Veil; substantially sisal condition of the people, and to minister to luxury, rather than to advance and elevate the nobler faculties of human nature. In all this it assimilated to the civilization of the East, or of the Aztecs and Peruvians. 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. Yet while inferior to her illustrious contemporary in intellectual vigour and emi- nence, Etruria was in advance of her in her social condition and in certain respects in physical civilization, or that state in which the arts and sciences are made to minister to comfort and luxury. The health and cleanliness of her towns were insured by a system of sewerage, vestiges of which may be seen on many Etruscan sites; and the cloaca maxima will be a memorial to all time of the attention paid by the Etruscans to drainage. Yet this is said to have been ne- glected by the Greeks. In her internal communication Etruria also shows her advance in physical civilization. Few extant remains of paved ways, it is true, can be pronounced Etruscan, but in the neighbourhood of most of her cities are traces of roads cut in the rocks, sometimes flanked with tombs, or even marked with inscriptions, determining their antiquity; and generally having water-chan- nels or gutters to keep them dry and clean. The Etruscans were also skilled in controlling the injurious processes of nature. They drained lakes by cutting tunnels through the heart of mountains, and they diverted the course of rivers to reclaim low and marshy ground, just as the Val di Chiana has been rescued in our own times. And these grand works are not only still extant, but some are even efficient as ever, after the lapse of so many, centuries. "That the Etruscans were eminently skilled in tunnelling, excavating, and giving form and beauty to shapeless rocks, and for useful purposes, is a fact im- pressed on the mind of every one who visits the land. Their tombs were all sub- terranean, and, with few exceptions, hewn in the rock, after the manner of the Egyptians and other people of the East. In troth, in no point is the Oriental character of the Etruscans more obviously marked than in their sepulchres; and modern researches are daily bringing to light fresh analogies to the tombs of Lycia, Phrygia, Lydia, or Egypt. "In physical comfort and luxury the Etruscans cannot have been surpassed by any contemporary nation. Whoever visits the Gregorian Museum of the Vatican, or that of the Cavaliere Campana at Rome, will have abundant proofs of this. Mach of it is doubtless owing to their extensive commerce which was their pride for ages. In their social condition they were in advance of the Greeks, particularly in one point which is an important test of civilization. In Athens, Woman was always degraded: she trod not by the side of man as his companion and helpmate, but followed as his slave: the treatment of the sex even in the days of Pericles, was what would now be called Oriental. But in Etruria, woman was honoured and respected: she took her place at the board by her husband's side, which she was never permitted to do in Athens; she was educated and ac- complished, and sometimes even instructed in the mysteries of divination; her children assumed her name as well as their father's.' and her grave was honoured with even more splendour than that of her lord. It is not easy to say to what Etruria owed this superiority. But whatever its cause, it was a fact which tended greatly to humanize -her, and through her to civilize Italy; a fact of which Rome especially reaped the benefit by imitating her example."

Besides the sketches of scenery and people, directly connected with the cities and cemeteries, the researches of Mr. Dennis frequently took him into remote parts of the country, rarely or never visited by travellers, and placed him in circumstances very different from those occurring to common tourists.

" Bieda, like every town and village off the main roads throughout the Roman state, is a wretched place, ' in linked squalor long drawn out, with in4 osteria where the traveller "who values comfort could venture to pass the night. There is but one respectable house; and here we were stopped by the Count of S. Giorgio, who stood at the door waiting to receive us. He apologized for delaying Us; but said that the presence of strangers was of so rare occurrence in this se- cluded village, that be could not allow us to pass without inquiring if he could be of service to us. We learned that be was from Turin ; but having bought some estates in this part of Italy, he had acquired therewith the title of Duke of Bieda, the honour of magistracy, and almost feudal dominion over the inhabitants of this village and its territory. The purchase could only be effected on these terms, and on the condition of his residing six months in the year on this spot, which he re- garded as a veritable exile from civilized society. He pointed out a ruin opposite as once the palace of the Counts of Anguillara, the old feudal lords of Bieda, who, among other barbarous privileges, claimed that of forestalling every bridegroom in their domain; by insisting on which, the last of these fine old Roman gentle- men three centuries since fell a victim to popular fury, and his mansion was de- stroyed. Yet much of the power of its feudal chiefs has descended to the present lord of Bieda; who told us he was almost absolute, that his will was law, that he had power over the lives and properties of his tenants, being supreme judge of both civil and criminal causes—in a country, be it remembered, where trial by jury is unknown. His rule, however, seemed based on love rather than on fear— more akin to that of the chief of a clan than to feudal seigneur on the one hand or to the authority of an English squire over his tenantry on the other.

" The Count courteously proposed to act as our cicerone to the antiquities of the neighbourhood, and mounted his steed to accompany us.

" Our first object was an ancient bridge of three arches, which lay in the ravine to the West of the town. The Count led the way down the descent, through a narrow cleft, sank some twenty feet in the tufo, with a channel or furrow in the middle, so deep and narrow that the horses could scarcely put one foot before the other; yet we were obliged to adhere to the Horatian maxim, in medic tutissimus, lest our legs should be crushed against the walls of rock."

We have confined our extracts to general topics, because the de- scription of ruins and tombs lose their interest if not read as a whole, and often require the illustrative maps and plates with which the volumes are interspersed. Those who feel inclined to study the subject of Etru- rian antiquities will do well to have recourse to Mr. Dennis's work. It contains the most complete popular account extant, and very frequently the pith of learned works directed to special points.