In his fourth Discourse Lord Leighton carried on his inquiry upon the origins and conditions of Art into the difficult region of the Etruscans; whose plastic work, like their speech, he considers, was at best an uncouth, vigorous imitation, or re-shaping, of Greek models. As examples of Etruscan Art, we are referred to "the two lovely bronze mirrors, preserved at Perugia and Berlin, representing,--one, Helen between Castor and Pollux,--the other, Bacchus, Semele, and Apollo.... In either case, the design is distinctly Greek; nevertheless a certain ruggedness of form and handling is felt in both, betraying a temper less subtle than the Hellenic; and we read without surprise on the one 'Pultuke,' and 'Phluphluus' on the other." Lest it should be thought that something less than justice is done to Etruscan Art, take this fine description of the tomb of Volumnus Violens: "The recumbent effigy of the Volumnian is, indeed, rude and of little merit; rude also in execution is the monument on which it rests, but in conception and design of a dignity almost Dantesque. Facing the visitor, as he enters the sepulchral chamber, this small sarcophagus--small in dimensions, but in impressiveness how great!--rivets him at once under the taper's fitful light. Raised on a rude basement, the body of the monument figures the entrance to a vault; in the centre, painted in colours that have nearly faded, appears a doorway, within the threshold of which four female figures gaze wistfully upon the outer world; on either side two winged genii, their brows girt with the never-failing Etruscan serpents, but wholly free from the quaintness of early Etruscan treatment, sit cross-legged, watching, torch in hand, the gate from which no living man returns. Roughly as they are hewn, it would be difficult to surpass the stateliness of their aspect or the art with which they are designed; Roman gravity, but quickened with Etruscan fire, invests them: ... and our thoughts are irresistibly carried forward to the supreme sculptor whom the Tuscan land was one day to bear." From Etruria, we pass naturally on to Rome; for, as we are significantly reminded, "The Romans lay, until the tide of Greek Art broke on them after the fall of Syracuse, wholly under the influence of the Etruscans.... Etruria gave them kings, augurs, doctors, mimes, musicians, boxers, runners; the royal purple, the royal sceptre, the fasces, the curule chair, the Lydian flute, the straight trumpet, and the curved trumpet. The education of a Roman youth received its finishing touches in Etruria: Tuscan engineers had girt Rome with walls; Tuscan engineers had built the great conduit through which the swamp, which was one day to be the Forum, was drained into the Tiber. What wonder, then, that in architecture, also in painting, in sculpture, in jewellery, and in all the things of taste, Etruscans gave the law to the ruder and less cultured race?"