from the fearful enterprises it prompted
them to, the iron hardihood and immeasurable contempt of death it
inspired in them, and the superstitious observances which, with
pains and expenses, they scrupulously kept. They buried, with the
dead, gold, useful implements, ornaments, that they might descend,
furnished and shining, to the halls of Hela. With a chieftain they
buried a pompous horse and splendid armor, that he might ride like
a warrior into Valhalla. The true Scandinavian, by age or sickness
deprived of dying in battle, ran himself through, or flung himself
from a precipice, in this manner to make amends for not expiring
in armed strife, if haply thus he might snatch a late seat among
the Einheriar. With the same motive the dying sea king had himself
laid on his ship, alone, and launched away, with out stretched
sails, with a slow fire in the hold, which, when he was fairly out
at sea, should flame up and, as Carlyle says, "worthily bury the
old hero at once in the sky and in the ocean." Surely then, if
ever, "the kingdom of heaven suffered violence, and the violent
took it by force."

CHAPTER IV.

ETRUSCAN DOCTRINE OF A FUTURE LIFE.

ALTHOUGH the living form and written annals of Etruria perished
thousands of years ago, and although but slight references to her
affairs have come down to us in the documents of contemporary
nations, yet, through a comparatively recent acquisition of facts,
we have quite a distinct and satisfactory knowledge of her
condition and experience when her power was palmiest. We follow
the ancient Etruscans from the cradle to the tomb, perceiving
their various national costumes, peculiar physiognomies, names and
relationships, houses, furniture, ranks, avocations, games, dying
scenes, burial processions, and funeral festivals. And, further
than this, we follow their souls into the world to come, behold
them in the hands of good or evil spirits, brought to judgment and
then awarded their deserts of bliss or woe. This knowledge has
been derived from their sepulchres, which still resist the
corroding hand of Time when nearly every thing else Etruscan has
mingled with the ground.1 They hewed their tombs in the living
rock of cliffs and hills, or reared them of massive masonry. They
painted or carved the walls with descriptive and symbolic scenes,
and crowded their interiors with sarcophagi, cinerary urns, vases,
goblets, mirrors, and a thousand other articles covered with
paintings and