They had not pyramids or giant temples to boast of. Their works were not for kings or for the exclusive profit of the governing priests, like those of Egypt or India, but for the public. They have left walls of cities, solid quays and ports, drains and sluices, useful even at the present time, as their monuments. But in their country, as well as in Egypt, it is in the repositories of the dead that we are to look for the relics of whatever was beautiful or ornamental among them[37]. The first steps of art have, doubtless, been the same among all nations; but the Tyrrhenians had some advantages in their early cultivation. They were early a maritime people; as merchants or as pirates they visited whatever ports the Phœnicians traded to, in the Mediterranean; and the effect of their foreign intercourse is to be traced in whatever we know of their institutions or see of their arts. But I must not allow myself to be seduced into more than the very slightest mention of the resemblance of some of their institutions to those of Greece, and of others to those of Egypt; and that mention is only made because the influence of the intercourse with other nations, upon the arts of Etruria, is so conspicuous, that it is impossible to give the slightest sketch of them without a reference to it[38]. The relics, confessedly of Etruscan manufacture, that from time to time have been discovered in various parts of Italy, had convinced us that the nation was early acquainted with the arts, but there was little to guide antiquaries as to the age of the relics themselves, or the sources whence those arts had been derived. The fabulous as well as the true stories of colonies from Asia, Egypt, and Greece, which had been left by the ancients, became signals of battle for modern disputants, and much ink has been shed in support of all manner of contradictory theories. The late historical disquisitions of the Germans and Italians cleared away a good deal of obscurity; the re-opening of the great cemeteries of Chuisi, Tarquinii, and Vulscii, have, as far as relates to art, done much more[39]; and we may safely conclude that the Etruscan artists, not mean in themselves, were improved by the importation of models from other countries, and probably by the settling of potters and metal founders from Sicyon, Corinth, and other Greek cities among them. That they early adopted the deities of other countries is also proved by the opening of the tombs of Chuisi. It is impossible not to be struck with the close resemblance to the sculpture and coloured bas-reliefs of Egypt found there; and, saving that the Tuscans do not appear to have practised embalming, the mystic ceremonies in honour of the dead are shown to be the same.