broken outline appear rather to have been hammered into the stone than cut out by a sharp instrument. The smaller engravings, I have little doubt, were scratched in with a piece of emery; the execution of the larger as well as the mode in which such immense masses of the hardest rocks were worked with such facility, will doubtless ever remain a mystery. For there is no doubt that the sculptors used only bronze chisels, which indeed are often discovered among the débris of their work; and that too for cutting granite and basalt, which now spoil the best steel instruments after a few strokes. Sir G. Wilkinson supposes that the workman used emery powder laid upon the part to be cut, and drove it into the stone with his soft chisel, by which process the powder itself formed a continually renewed edge to the tool, capable of subduing the most impenetrable substances. I do not know whether this be a mere theory, or if the experiment has been actually tried. It rather seems to me that some means must have been known of softening the stone to a certain extent, and this, together with an unbounded supply of forced labour, affords the only satisfactory solution of the difficulty. Cicognetti, a Roman architect, who erected an altar in Cardinal Tosti's chapel in S. Maria Maggiore, the upper part of which was decorated with small columns of red Porphyry, informed me that the only way now known of cutting that stone is to steep it for several weeks in urine, and that even then it was worked with the greatest difficulty. It occupied the French workmen with the best modern tools the space of six weeks to cut a small groove around the base of the obelisk of Luxor, before removing it from its pedestal. And yet, besides these Egyptian relics so profusely covered with sculptures, huge columns, as well as statues and basreliefs of Porphyry, continued to be made in great profusion by the Romans quite to the close of the Empire. Magnificent examples of this still remain in the tombs of the Empress Helena, and of her grand-daughter Constantia, sculptured from enormous blocks of that stone, and adorned with busts and groups in alto-relievo, the mere repolishing and restoration of which, on their removal to the museum of the Vatican, occupied several workmen for the space of seven years. 18 Signet of Sabaco II. GREEK, ETRUSCAN, AND SARDINIAN. 6 These classes of intagli are treated of here under the same head, because it is as difficult to distinguish those belonging to the archaic period of Greek art from the Etruscan, as it is to decide the long-agitated question, whether the majority of painted vases are of Greek or Etruscan origin. There is one remarkable peculiarity in these intagli, that no middle class of works presents itself between the extremely rude designs almost entirely executed by the drill, and engravings of the nicest finish in low relief, almost entirely scratched into the stone with the diamond point. While the first class offer caricatures of men and animals, the favourite subjects being 6 Pythagoras is said by Hermippus to have been the son of Mnesarchus, a gem-engraver and an Etruscan according to Aristotle. This shows the high antiquity of the art among the Etruscans, and that it had already constituted a distinct profession at this very remote period, nearly six centuries before our era. figures throwing the discus, fauns with amphora, cows with sucking calves, or the latter alone; the second gives us subjects from the Greek mythology, especially scenes from Homer and the Tragedians, among which the stories of Philoctetes and Bellerophon occur with remarkable frequency. The usual finish to all these designs is a border, in most cases simply milled like the edge of a coin, but sometimes very carefully worked in the pattern, called the guilloche," resem bling a wide-linked chain, or a loosely-twisted cable. From this striking contrast between the style of the two classes of gems, and as no traces are to be discovered of a transition from one to the other, a thing so observable in the various gradations of Roman art, it is certainly allowable to conjecture that the fine are of Greek, the barbarous of Etruscan manufacture. Their being found abundantly in the Etrurian 7 This guilloche border is often found enclosing the types upon the large flat didrachms of certain cities of Magna Grecia, as Metapontum and Sybaris. The figure of the bullheaded river-god, the Achelous, on the former coins, and the long-horned ox regardant, resembling an antelope, upon the latter, are executed in a flat stiff manner, but highly finished, and very similar to the work on many of these gems, with which there can be no doubt they were coeval. This confirms my opinion that the best of these intagli are not of Etruscan origin, but that the idea was taken from that people, and improved upon by the Greek colonists of the south of Italy. As the city of Sybaris was utterly destroyed B.C. 510, and never restored, all the extant coins must have been issued during the two centuries before that date; and hence we can form a notion as to the actual epoch of the intagli corresponding with these in style and workmanship. soil is no proof of their native origin, for in the flourishing times of the Etruscans before the ruin of their power by the Gallic invasion, they carried on an extensive commerce with the Grecian states. And it is a circumstance somewhat at variance with our notions of Greek pre-eminence in art in every age, that Etruria supplied even the Athenians with every kind of ornamental article in bronze, as vases, lamps, &c., which is proved by the lines of Critias, (Athenæus, i. 50): Τυρσηνη δε κρατει χρυσοτυπος φιαλη και πας χαλκος ὁτις κοσμει δομον ἐν τινι χρειᾳ. "Etruria bears the palm for gold-wrought bowls, It was not until after the age of Alexander that the Greek works in bronze became celebrated. All the masterpieces of the early Athenian sculptors were executed in marble, wood, or ivory. The Etruscans were naturally led to perfection in this manufacture, like the Florentines of the Cinque-Cento period, from the inexhaustible supply of the metal which they derived from Monte-Catino, near Leghorn, still a source of great wealth to the company working the mine. But to return to our gems. Those assigned above to the Greeks are usually the light amber-coloured Sards, which seem always to have been a favourite with that people. Many of these gems have evidently been sawn off from scarabs, even in ancient times, for the purpose of being set in rings, when the wearing of the beetle-stones, had gone out of fashion as soon as the religious motive became obsolete which had made this figure so popular with the Egyptians 8 At the moment of the accession of Alexander the Great to the throne, a fleet of Tuscan pirates was plundering the sea-coast of Macedonia. and their disciples, the Etruscans. For to all appearance they had derived from Egypt their entire religious system, as is shown by the existence of a sacerdotal caste, the institution of mysteries, and the extraordinary care lavished upon the construction and decoration of their sepulchres. I have seen scarabs in all possible materials from emerald to amber, and glass pastes (the latter the rarest of all); but by far the greatest number are formed of the common red Carnelian, supplied by the beds of their torrents, and they are usually very much of the same size. Few will be found to exceed an inch in length, and in this particular they contrast strongly with the Egyptian, which vary from the colossal beetle of some feet across the back, to the tiny pendant no larger than a fly. This is the proper place briefly to notice the manner in which they were worn as ornaments by their ancient owners. The earliest method was that of simply stringing them, intermixed with other beads, and thus wearing them as a necklace, the engraved base of the scarab serving at the same time the purpose of a signet. Sometimes, however, they seem to have been introduced into these necklaces merely as ornaments, as in the famous one found in Tuscany in 1852, and which merits a particular description. It is composed of inch in diameter, a chain woven of the finest gold wire, and 11 inches long; each end terminating in bands of scrollwork with loops attached. From this chain descend 32 others, 1 inch long, of a curb-pattern, the alternate links to the left and to the right forming a diamond-pattern. Between these chains, and attached to the broad chain, are 16 full-faced bearded heads of Bacchus. In the centre of each diamond formed by the smaller chains, are alternately 6 fullfaced harpies in a seated posture, and 7 diota-shaped ornaments; between these comes another row of escalloped forms, |