th, mingled with them in time, but did
not efface them; and I do not doubt that the vast mass of the
population of Tuscany at the present day is still of preponderatingly
Etruscan blood, though qualified, of course (and perhaps improved), by
many Italic, Celtic, and Teutonic elements.

Again, when we remember that Florence, Pisa, Siena, Perugia are all
practically in Tuscany, and that Florence alone has really given to the
world Dante and Boccaccio, Galileo and Savonarola, Cimabue and Giotto,
Botticelli and Fra Angelico, Donatello and Ghiberti, Michael Angelo and
Raffael, Leonardo da Vinci and Macchiavelli and Alfieri, and a host of
other almost equally great names, it will be obvious to every one that
the problem of the origin of this Tuscan nationality must be one that
profoundly interests the whole world. Nay, more, we must remember, too,
that Etruria had other and earlier claims than these; that it spread up
to the very walls of Rome; that the Etruscan element in Rome itself was
immensely strong; that the Roman religion owed, confessedly, much to
Tuscan ideas; that Latin Christianity, the Christianity of all the
Western world, took its shape in semi-Tuscan Rome; that the Roman
Empire was largely modelled by the Etruscan Maecenas; that the Italian
renaissance was largely influenced by the Florentine Medici; that Leo
the Tenth was himself a member of that great house; and that the
artists whom he summoned to the metropolis to erect St. Peter's and to
beautify the Vatican were, almost all of them, Florentines by birth,
training, or domicile. I think, when we have run over mentally these
and ten thousand other like facts, we will readily admit to ourselves
the magnitude of the world's debt to Tuscany--social, artistic,
intellectual, religious--both in ancient, mediaeval, and modern times.

And what, now, was this strong Tuscan nationality, which persists so
thoroughly through all external historical changes, and which has
contributed so large and so marvellous a part to the world's thought
and the world's culture? It is a curious consideration for those who
talk so glibly, about the enormous natural superiority of the Aryan
race, that the ancient Etruscans were the one people of the antique
European world, who, by common consent, did _not_ belong to the Aryan
family. They were strangers in the land, or, rather, perhaps they were
its oldest possessors. Their language, their physique, their creed,
their art, all point to