ents of martial
experience,--horses, chariots, arms,--warriors wounded, defeated, dying,
victorious, struggling. One I remember of a surgeon dressing the wound
of a warrior, who throws up his hands in expression of the pain he
suffers; another, of the Genius of Death coming to Hercules; another
still, of two winged genii burying a warrior; one, of two warriors
dividing the dead body of a third, etc., etc. The style of cutting
gradually changes, probably under the influence of Greek artists,--who
are known to have emigrated to Etruria from Corinth, exiled by their
native tyrants,--and becomes quite Greek in delicacy of finish and grace
of proportion; and the subject becomes almost entirely of Greek history
or mythology,--the heroes of the Trojan war figuring largely.

Some of these are the perfection of intaglio: nothing in the gem-cutting
of the Greeks could be more exquisite and purely beautiful than they are
_as intaglio_. Yet, excellent as is the work, there is an essential
difference between the Etruscan and Greek design, which no similarity of
workmanship will ever conceal,--a difference as radical as that between
Roman and Greek sculpture, and still more marked. The Etruscan, in its
highest artistic development, preserves something of an Oriental fantasy
and want of repose, and invariably falls short of the dignified and
purely imaginative character of the Greek. It makes no exception to this
rule, that there are Etruscan Scarabaei which have purely Greek intaglii,
since we know that there were Greek artists of the highest rank among
those who emigrated to Etruria, and that it was customary for one
workman to make the Scarabaeus, and another the incision. But these are
rare, and the trained eye of an artist need not be more puzzled to
determine the Greek or Etruscan character of an intaglio, than to
distinguish a Florentine picture from a Venetian. The difference is
radical,--that between the objective and subjective art,--between an
Indian shawl and a bit of drapery by Paul Veronese.

As to the uses of the Scarabaeus, we may be sure that they were at first
intended as signets and mounted as rings in the simple and charming way
of which we find so many examples in the Etruscan tombs, each end of a
gold wire being passed through the perforated Scarabaeus, and the
extremities secured by being wound round the wire at the opposite side
of the stone. As soon as they become mere ornaments, a more elaborate
mounting is