his uncle with which some reports charge him. The gate at least makes no answer, save that we see that the Roman built on the foundations of the Etruscan, save that the legend of "Augusta Perusia" is itself a record of destruction and revival. The gateway, tall, narrow, gloomy, the Roman arch springing from two vast Etruscan towers, is a contrast indeed to such strictly architectural designs as the two gates of Autun. The Roman builder was evidently cramped by the presence of the older work. In fact the general character of the gateway has more in common with the endless mediæval gateways and arches which span the streets of Perugia. Of really better design, though blocked and in a less favourable position, is the other gateway, the Porta Martis, which now makes part of the substructure of the new piazza, as it once did of that of the papal fortress. And he who looks curiously will find out, not indeed any more Roman gateways, but the jambs from which at least two other arches, either Roman or Etruscan, once sprang.

The walls and gateways of a city can hardly be called its skeleton, but they are in some sort its shell. And at Perugia the body within the shell was of no mean kind. Take away every great public building, church, or palace, and Perugia itself, its mere streets and houses, would have a great deal to show. With no grand street arcades like Bologna, few or no striking private palaces like Venice and Verona, Perugia once had streets after streets—the small and narrow streets not the least conspicuously—of a thoroughly good and simple style of street architecture. Arched doors and arched windows are all, and they are quite enough. Some are round, some are pointed; some are of brick, some of stone; and those of brick with round arches are decidedly the best. But never were buildings more mercilessly spoiled than the Perugian houses. As in England mediæval houses are spoiled to make bigger windows, so at Perugia they are spoiled to make smaller windows. Most of the doorways and windows are cut through and blocked, and an ugly square hole is bored to do the duty of the artistic feature which is destroyed. No land has more to show in the way of various forms of beauty than Italy; but when an Italian does go in for ugliness he beats all other nations in carrying out his object.

Perugia, we need hardly say, is a city of paintings, and it is as receptacles for paintings that its churches seem mainly to be looked on. But some of them deserve no small attention on other grounds. At the two ends of the city are two churches which follow naturally on the Etruscan and Roman walls and gates. At one end, the Church of St. Angelo, circular within, sixteen-sided without, forms one of the long series of round and polygonal churches which stretch from Jerusalem to Ludlow. And this, clearly a building of Christian Roman times, with its beautiful marble and granite Corinthian columns, though not one of the greatest in size, holds no mean place among them. At the other end, the Abbey of Saint Peter, amid many changes, still keeps two noble ranges of Ionic columns, the spoils doubtless of some Pagan building at its first erection in the eleventh century. Nor must the duomo itself be judged of by its outside. The work of a German architect, it shows a German character in the three bodies of the same height, and its pillars consequently of amazing height. But at Perugia it is not churches or palaces or earlier remains which we study, each apart from other things. Here they all unite to form a whole greater than any one class alone—Augusta Perusia itself.

The Volumnian Tomb.

The ancient Etruscans have some points of analogy with the modern Freemasons. This last familiar and yet mysterious body seems to let the outer world know everything about itself, except what it is. We have read various books by Freemasons about Freemasonry, about its history, its constitution, its ritual. On all these points they seem to give us the fullest particulars: we have only to complain that the historical part is a little vague, and its evidence a little uncertain. We should not like rashly to decide whether Freemasonry was already ancient in the days of Solomon or whether it cannot be traced with certainty any further back than the eighteenth century. But we know the exact duties of a Tyler, and we know that at the end of a Masonic prayer we should answer, not "Amen," but "So mote it be." Still, what Freemasonry is, how a man becomes a Freemason, or what really distinguishes a Freemason from other people, are points about which the Masonic books leave us wholly in the dark. So it is with the Etruscans. We seem to know everything about them, except who they were. As far as we can know a people from their arts and monuments, there is no people whom we seem to know better. We have full and clear monumental evidence as to the people themselves, as to many points in their ways, thoughts, and belief. We know how they built, carved, and painted, and their buildings, sculptures, and paintings, tell us in many points how they lived, and what was their faith and worship. We have indeed no Etruscan books; but their language still lives, at least it abides, in endless inscriptions. But who the Etruscans were, and what their language was, remain unsolved puzzles. The ordinary scholar is half-amused, half-provoked, at long lines of alphabetic writing, of which, as far as the mere letters go, he can read a great deal, but of which, save here and there a proper name, he cannot understand a word. He knows that one ingenious man has read it all into good German and another into good Turkish. He curses every Lucumo whose image he sees for sticking like a Frenchman to his own tongue. Why could they not write up everything in three or four languages? How happy he would be if he could light on a Latin or Greek crib which would give life to the dead letter. For surely nothing in the world so truly answers the description of a dead letter, as words after words, most of which it is not hard to spell, but at the meaning of which we cannot even guess.

It is natural that in the museums of the Etruscan cities the monuments of a kind whose interest is specially local should form a chief part of the show. At Florence, at Arezzo, at Cortona, at Perugia, the collections which each city has brought together make us familiar, if we are not so already, with much of Etruscan art and Etruscan life. Or shall we say that what they really make us familiar with is more truly Etruscan death? Our knowledge of most nations of remote times comes largely from their tombs and from the contents of their tombs, and this must specially be the case with a people who, like the Etruscans, have left no literature behind them. The last distinction makes it hardly fair to attempt any comparison between the Etruscans and nations like the Greeks or the Romans, with whose writings we are familiar. But suppose we had no Greek or Roman literature, suppose we had, as we have in the case of the Etruscans, no means of learning anything of Greek or Roman life, except from Greek and Roman monuments. The sepulchral element would be very important; but it would hardly be so distinctly dominant as it is in the Etruscan case. At all events, it would not be so distinctly forced upon the thoughts as it is in the Etruscan case. Take a Roman sarcophagus: we know it to be sepulchral, but it does not of itself proclaim its use; there often is no distinct reference to the deceased person; at all events, his whole figure