th perpetual Balkanic eruptions, so to speak. Their
conception of life did not admit of the absence of at least one
good summer campaign. Mr. Stobart neatly puts it to this effect:
no man is content to live ambitionless on a bare pittance and the
necessaries; he must see some prospect, some margin, as well;
and for these folk, now that they had freed themselves from the
Etruscans, the necessaries were from their petty agriculture, the
margin was to be looked for in war.

Among these cities was one on the Tiber, about sixteen miles up
from the mouth. It had had a great past under kings of its own,
before the Etruscan conquest; very likely had wielded wide
empire in its day. A tradition of high destiny hung about it,
and was ingrained in the consciousness of its citizens; and I
believe that this is always what remains of ancient greatness
when time, cataclysms, and disasters have wiped all actual
memories thereof away. But now, say in 500 B.C., we are to think
of it as a little peasant community in an age and land where
there was no such wide distinction between peasant and bandit.
It had for its totem, crest, symbol, what you will, very
appropriately, a she-wolf....

Art or culture, I said, there was none;--and yet, too, we might
pride ourselves on certain great possessions to be called
(stretching it a little), _in that line;_ which had been left to
us by our erstwhile Etruscan lords, or executed for us by
Etruscan artists with their tongues in their cheeks and sides
quietly shaking.--Ha, you men of Praeneste! you men of Tibur!
sing small, will you? _We_ have our grand Jupiter on the
Capitoline, resplendent in vermilion paint; what say you to
that? Paid for him, too, (a surmise, this!) with cattle raided
from your fields, my friends!

Everything handsome about us, you see; but not for this must you
accuse us of the levity of culture. We might patronize; we did
not dabble.--One seems to hear from those early ages, echoes of
tones familiar now. Ours is the good old roast beef and common
sense of--I mean, the grand old _gravitas_ of Rome. What! you
must have a Jupiter to worship, mustn't you? No sound as by
Parliament-Established-Religion of Numa Pompilius, Sir, and the
world would go to the dogs! And, of course, vermilion paint. It
wears well, and is a good bloody color with no levity about it;
besides, can be seen a long way off--whereby it serves to keep
you rascals stirred up with jealousy, or should