by reality, must be fed and nourished by the poets, poetry, works of art, and historical facts of the past. Our meagreness and poverty in artistic productions take their origin in our unpardonable neglect of the study of history; through this neglect we have deprived art altogether of its firmest basis. The very moment that the Greek artists lost their historical and poetical ground, they took to and excelled in painting barbers’ and shoemakers’ shops; oyster shells, vases, little combinations of chairs and musical instruments, and small things, with great accuracy. In fact the same causes produced the same pictorial effects; the mind of the Greek nation had dwindled, and their works of art embraced decorations of household furniture and pottery. In these ornamentations the reminiscences of a by-gone age may be traced; they are still symmetrical to the highest degree, plants are still treated with great conventional freedom, but the Greeks only worked as skilful workmen--artists they produced no more. CHAPTER IX. ETRUSKAN ART. The first question that here suggests itself is, who were the Etruskans? Their name Tuskan, from Tuisko, points at once to an Aryan branch of Teutonic race. But ethnologists differ. Some say they were Phœnicians, others assert they were Egyptians; some that they were pure Teutons, and others that they were pure Kelts. Taking their old pottery into consideration, as given in Lord Hamilton’s admirable plates, or in the collection of the Museum at Clusium (Chiusi), we are induced to pronounce the aborigines of Etruria to have been Turanians, conquered by immigrant Aryans. This mixture of Aryans and Mongols under the influence of a totally different aspect of nature, on a different soil, under different social and religious conditions, produced a type quite different from the Greek--a kind of transition link between the Pelasgians and the Romans. Two distinct immigrations of Aryans into Etruria are recorded. The first about 1650 B.C., when Pelasgians and Thyrrenians settled amongst the aborigines; and the second, 400 years before Herodotus, about the times of Thales and Lykurgus. Of the first immigration we have scarcely any relics; the second time the immigrants succeeded in forming an organised social state; they brought with them Greek mythological notions, and a kind of Greek writing. Their language and writing died out after Augustus, and disappeared altogether before Julian, fourth century A.D. Nature forced them to industry and enterprise. The Etruskans had to cultivate their fields by individual exertion; in spring they had to ward off the devastating waters of overflowing rivers, and in summer they had to provide water for their parched valleys. They consequently became masters in constructing aqueducts and irrigating the land, at an early period.