story of the time,--a change from the
golden to the iron days of Etruria.

The marvellous treasures of these tombs,--though only the few which, by
comparative insignificance or fortunate accident, have escaped the
unintelligent ravage of Roman or of Goth,--are like the scale or bone of
Agassiz's saurian; and a necklace of Scarabaei alternated with the
little pendent fantasies in gold, which we may see in the Campana
collection, is the fragment from which we build Etruria, taking a little
help from the time-defying walls, and a hint from the sarcophagus whose
mutually embracing effigies of the two made one tell that position given
to woman which made Rome what she was after the fraud of Romulus gave to
Romans Etruscan wives.

The Etrurians were the gold-workers of all time. Like shawls of
Cashmere, Greek statuary, Gothic architecture, and Saracenic tracery,
Etruscan gold-work stands absolutely alone,--the result of an artistic
instinct deeper than any rules or any instruction, and therefore not to
be improved or repeated. It is characterized by the most subtile and
lovely use of decorative masses and lines,--not for representation or
imitation, which are not motives to enter into pure ornament, but for
the highest effect of beautiful form and rich color, without giving the
eye or mind any associative or intellectual suggestion. The vice of all
modern ornamentation is, that it insists on mixing natural history with
decoration. It cannot avoid preaching, as fairy stories now-a-days
cannot stop without a moral for good children, and consequently is, like
them, stupid and unreal. The best ornamentation is that which is
farthest from imitation; and that, in gold-work, is the Etruscan. As we
had occasion to say in the preceding pages, the Scarabaeus marks the
difference between the moralizing Egyptian mind and the beauty-loving
Etruscan. And if we might point a moral in an article defiant of morals,
it would be in comparing the black, blood-stained history of Egypt with
the fair record of the Larthian people. Beauty is its own moral and its
own redeemer, and a mind that loves it may be corrupted to decay, but
cannot be led into brutality or sunk into obscurity. Of the magnificence
of the living people we can scarcely judge, since all we have now is the
gorgeous array of those who were robed for the eternal rest. Castellani,
in his pamphlet on the antique gold-work (_Dell' Oreficeria Antica,
Discorso di August Castellani_), sa