There is a very widespread belief that the arch was invented and first used in Italy, and high authorities, like Viollet-le-Duc in his famous _Entretiens sur l’architecture_, put forth the theory that the Romans learned its use from the Etruscans, from whom they borrowed so much of their early civilisation. But if they did, is it certain that the real origin was not Greek? Is it likely that this enigmatical nation found out a great principle of construction unknown to the Greeks? I think not; and all the more so, as I hold all the early Etruscan culture to have been stimulated by the Greeks, with whom Etruria had an older and deeper connection than was suspected a generation ago. For now we come back to the statement of Herodotus, that this nation came from Asia Minor, and by sea, to Italy. The settlers of the earliest Greek colony in Italy--Cumæ--followed in their track, and their immigration seems not to have been very early. Hence they may very well have borrowed their use of the arch from early Greek teachers, and thus imposed it upon the Romans and upon the world. But does it really matter to my argument? Even the Romans, who perfected the use of the arch, were not satisfied with it unless they had put it inside a Greek face of pillars and architraves. The Greek temple has afforded a model which has been copied in every capital of Europe, and in its most perfect form has an artistic splendour which is second to none among the buildings of the world. I will repeat that, as the Greeks determined at a very early age that domed or circular buildings were the proper receptacle of the dead, so they have transmitted that decision through the Romans to modern Europe. The Pantheon, whatever its original use, has come to be the solemn resting-place of national heroes. The great tomb of Hadrian, now the Castle of St. Angelo, was built under the same prepossession, and so through all ages down to the _Invalides_ in Paris, and the memorial to Shelley at Oxford, all these houses of the dead are the offspring artistically of the Treasure-house of Atreus, of the Tomb of the Minyæ, and of the rest, consecrated by the old Greeks. Quite recently, when our King brought me to see the Mausoleum of Queen Victoria and her Consort at Frogmore, I was able to point out to him that the builders of this circular chamber also, though they probably knew it not themselves, were copying the ancient and almost universal model of a house for the dead. The Greeks very possibly derived this old idea from a northern race. The occurrence of similar forms in the early tombs of Ireland and of other parts of Europe seem to show that there was some prehistoric agreement about this form of tomb--the most distinguished, as well as the safest, residence they could devise, first for living men, then for departed kings or chiefs who demanded cult and sacrifice. That may be all very true, but it does not alter the fact that it was from the Greeks that civilised Europe adopted the idea.