pay their
devotions to their departed friends. The tombs of this people were
thus at the same time also their temples--the sacred places where they
came to perform the rites of their religion, which consisted in
worshipping the lares and penates of their beloved dead, and making
offerings to them. And by this striking link of the cultus of the dead
the ancient Etruscans were connected with the present inhabitants of
Northern Asia, the Finns, Laplanders, Tartars, Mongols, and Chinese,
who have no temples or places of special honour for their idols, but
assemble once a year or oftener at the graves of their ancestors to
worship the dead. But after all there is no great difference in this
respect between the races, ancient and modern; for the churchyard and
the church, the burial vaults and monuments within the cathedral and
chapel, show how universal is the instinct that associates the dead
with the shrine of religion, and makes the tomb the most appropriate
place for giving expression to those blessed hopes of immortality upon
which all religion is founded. The sanctuary of the Holy Land derived
its sacredness, as well as the charter of its inheritance, from the
cave of Machpelah. Around that patriarchal tomb clustered all the
grand religious hopes of the covenant people. The early Christians
adopted and purified the Etruscan custom which they found in Rome, and
erected over the tombs of the martyrs and other illustrious persons
_Cellae Memoriae_, or memorial chapels, in which on anniversary
occasions the friends and brethren assembled to partake of a funeral
feast in honour of the dead. The primitive Agapae, or love-feasts, were
often nothing more than such banquets in the memorial cells at the
tombs of the faithful. And in our own country, many of our most
important churches, towns, and villages took their origin and name
from the grave of some saint, who in far-off times hallowed the spot
and made it a shrine of worship.

There are numerous indications that this Painted Tomb at Veii is of
very great antiquity, and may be considered as probably the oldest
tomb in Europe. No inscription of any kind has been found on its walls
or any of its contents; and this circumstance, which is almost
singular so far as all Etruscan tombs yet discovered are concerned, of
itself indicates a very remote date, when the art of letters if known
at all was only known to a privileged few, and confined to public and
sacred monuments. No clu