But when the arch is made the life of the whole building, standing out in all its boldness and majesty, the work is infinitely nobler than when accompanied by the incongruous Grecian mask. The original Etruscans had the independence so to use the grand principle they were the first properly to appreciate, and the creations of their hands are of the greatest intrinsic worth. Their roads and bridges, tombs and city walls, cloacæ and tunnels are so extraordinary that, after twenty-five centuries, they remain unsurpassed even by their gigantic conquerors. They drained marshes, cultivated barren plains, and brought Italy from a savage state to that degree of civilization which enabled the Romans to profit by, more than the great originals who prepared the field of their first occupancy, and then were displaced. Such is necessarily the history of human progress, when excellence of a given kind is made to yield to some other superior force, but which in turn will succumb to the same law, and contribute to the greatest good of the greatest number in the end. It is interesting to reflect on the contrast which existed between the architectural principle of two great primordial people in almost simultaneous developement. At a time when her existence was scarcely known to the refined republics of Greece, the barbarian state on the banks of the Tiber began to employ the mightiest of mechanical discoveries, through the means of which vast spaces were roofed in with stone or brick, while, through ignorance or contempt of it, the most glorious temples of Pentelic marble remained exposed to shower and sun, or were imperfectly sheltered by a covering of wood. The sewers of Rome were a vast improvement in practical mechanics over the structures at Athens; and if Etruscan genius had been permitted to work out completely its own ideas, a simple, noble, and majestic style would doubtless have been developed. As it was, their rudest works announced the fundamental principles of excellence and consistency which belonged not to edifices of greater ambition; and Rome had the honor of transmitting a prolific germ under the westering sun, where it arose and justly claimed to be considered the noblest offspring of the human mind.