arcely be looked
upon without tears, others of the most appalling nature, showing
perfect abandonment to fright, screams, sobbing, and despair. The
last hour is described under all circumstances, coming to all
sorts of persons, prince, priest, peasant, man, mother, and child.
Patriarchs are dying surrounded by groups in every posture of
grief; friends are waving a mournful farewell to their weeping
lovers; wives are torn from the embrace of their husbands; some
seem resigned and willingly going, others reluctant and driven in
terror.

The next series of engravings contain descriptions and emblems of
the departure of the soul from this world, and of its passage into
the next. There are various symbols of this mysterious transition:
one is a snake with a boy riding upon its back, its amphibious
nature plainly typifying the twofold existence allotted to man.
The soul is also often shown muffled in a veil and travelling
garb, seated upon a horse, and followed by a slave carrying a
large sack of provisions, an emblem of the long and dreary journey
about to be taken. Horses are depicted harnessed to cars in which
disembodied spirits are seated, a token of the swift ride

3 Saturnal. lib. i. cap. 7.

4 Dennis, Cities and Cemeteries of Etruria, ch. xii.

of the dead to their doom. Sometimes the soul is gently invited,
or led, by a good spirit, sometimes beaten, or dragged away, by
the squalid and savage Charun, the horrible death king, or one of
his ministers; sometimes a good and an evil spirit are seen
contending for the soul; sometimes the soul is seen, on its knees,
beseeching the aid of its good genius and grasping at his
departing wing, as, with averted face, he is retiring; and
sometimes the good and the evil spirits are leading it away
together, to abide the sentence of the tribunal of Mantus. Whole
companies of souls are also set forth marching in procession,
under the guidance of a winged genius, to their subterranean
abode.

Finally, there is a class of representations depicting the
ultimate fate of souls after judgment has been passed. Some are
shown seated at banquet, in full enjoyment, according to their
ideas of bliss. Some are shown undergoing punishment, beaten with
hammers, stabbed and torn by black demons. There are no proofs
that the Etruscans believed in the translation of any soul to the
abode of the gods above the sky, no signs of any path rising to
the supernal heaven; but they clearly expecte