Passing through a beautiful copse wood, where cyclamens grew in lavish profusion, forming little rosy clusters about the oak-stools and diffusing a faint spicy smell through the warm air, we came out at one of the gates of the city into open ground. This gate is simply a gap in a shapeless mound, with traces of an ancient roadway passing through it and fragments of walls on either side. Where the stones can be seen projecting through the turf embankment they are smaller than usual in Etruscan cities. Sir William Gell found hereabouts a portion of the wall composed of enormous blocks of tufa--three or four yards long and more than five feet in height--based upon three courses of thin bricks three feet in length, that rested upon the naked rock. Such a mode of wall construction has no resemblance to anything remaining in Rome or in any Etruscan city. It indicates a still higher antiquity; while the brick foundations remind us of the fame which the Etruscans and particularly the people of Veii had acquired on account of their skill in works of terra cotta. The famous Quadriga or brick chariot which adorned the pediment of the great temple of Jupiter on the Capitol at Rome was made at Veii, and was a remarkable proof of the superiority of its people in this species of art. Indeed the name of Veii is supposed to have been derived from its skill in the manufacture of terra cotta chariots. The old gateway through which we passed out of the wood was probably the principal entrance into the city, and the one over which Tolumnius King of Veii appeared, standing on the wall, during the famous siege when he was challenged to mortal combat by Cornelius Cossus, as graphically described by Livy.