d almost
invariably upon some railway or some navigable river. In Italy it is
still quite possible, where agricultural conditions are favourable, to
have a comparatively flourishing town perched upon some out-of-the-way
mountain height. Even a carriage road is scarcely a necessity; a mule
path will do well enough for wine and oil and the other simple
commodities of southern life. The hill-top town, in short, belongs to
an earlier type of civilisation than ours; it survives, unaltered, on
its own pinnacle wherever that type of civilisation is still possible.

And I sincerely hope our pretty American friend will pardon me for
having thus publicly answered, at so great length, her natural
question.

A PERSISTENT NATIONALITY.

Standing to-day before the dim outline of Orcagna's "Hell" in the
Church of Santa Maria Novella, at Florence, and mentally comparing
those mediaeval demons and monsters and torturers on the frescoed wall
in front of me with the more antique Etruscan devils and tormentors
pictured centuries earlier on the ancient tombs of Etrurian princes,
the thought, which had often occurred to me before, how essentially
similar were the Tuscan intellect and Tuscan art in all ages, forced
itself upon me once more at a flash with an irresistible burst of
internal conviction. The identity of old and new seemed to stand
confessed. Etruria throughout has been one and the same; and it is
almost impossible for any one to over-estimate the influence of the
powerful, but gloomy, Etruscan character upon the whole tone, not only
of popular Christianity, but of that modern civilisation which is its
offspring and outcome.

I suppose it is hardly necessary, "in this age of enlightenment" (as
people used to say in the last century), to insist any longer upon the
obvious fact that conquest and absorption do not in any way mean
extermination. Most people still vaguely fancy to themselves, to be
sure, that, when Rome conquered and absorbed Etruria, the ancient
Etruscan ceased at once to exist--was swallowed, as it were, and became
forthwith, in some mysterious way, first a Roman, and then a modern
Italian. And, in a certain sense, this is, no doubt, more or less true;
but that sense is decidedly not the genealogical one. Manners change,
but blood persists. The Tuscan people went on living and marrying under
consul and emperor just as they had done under _lar_ and _lucumo_;
Latin and Gaul, Lombard and Go