precious than gold and than silver, since they were made in times when, according to Pliny, gold and silver were worked not for men, nor even for the gods themselves. Take care that they are not broken nor lost, but pass down from age to age like the stars. What a number of fine things you have-and you may yet possess!! but your heart is refulgent above all; and if your modesty did not snatch the pen from my hand, how much I should write on that topic! I wait then for your other agreeable commands, that I may show you by deeds that I am," &c. The owner may think he follows his friend's advice by retaining one or two of the best specimens. Thirdly, the museum contains a great variety of articles, all of them inferred to have been laid under the rock, but for which circumstance there is no guarantee, even in the affidavits attached to the memoir; the bronze implements, in great number and of every shape, are of as elegant and elaborate workmanship as is to be found in the specimens which are seen in the other museums of Europe, and which confessedly belong to a much later age than that assumed by Visconti. These bronze implements are frequently discovered in Italy and Greece, and certainly do not agree with the pottery of the large jar, or of the cinerary vase, which is of a form much more rude than suits with their shape and make. They do, however, agree well enough with the lamps and lacrymatories, which are entirely of the kind discovered every day in Greek and Roman burials. It is possible then, and, all things considered, probable, that the interments have been completed and adjusted since the discovery, and that part of the pottery may belong to one period, and the implements and the other part of the pottery to another. The styli are in great variety, and belonged to a people whose alphabet was less rude than the pretended letters on the vases-one of the fibula has not altogether lost the spring. It must not be deemed too uncharitable to hesitate before we believe that all the articles were found in the Alban vases. In the fourth place: the larger pottery is neither Roman nor Tuscan. It is not altogether unlike that found in other places, and supposed to be the work of the early inhabitants, whom it is usual to call Indigenes. The most learned Roman writers, Porcius Cato, Caius Sempronius, and others, were of opinion that the Aborigines, or, as others called them, the Aberrigines, were Greeks from Achaia, who had migrated to Italy many years before the Trojan war; and Dionysius says that, in that case, they were Arcadians who accompanied Enotrus and Peucetius seventeen generations before the Trojan war,* some of whom settled in Umbria,† and sent out colonies to the Corniculan or Tiburtine mountains. These Aborigines were joined by the Pelasgi, * Lib. i. cap. vi. † Ibid. cap. xiii. Ibid. cap. xvi. colonists originally from Argos,* and the two nations, about three generations before the Trojan war, were in possession of all the country from the Tiber to the Liris; but the Pelasgi were extinct at the end of that war, or were mingled with the Aborigines. § According to this account, we have Greeks settled for ages in these hills before the coming of Æneas to Italy; but that these Greeks were little better than barbarians we may collect from the same authority, which tells us that the Arcadians under Evander, who settled on the Palatine hill about sixty years before the Trojan war, || were the first that introduced the Greek letters, Greek music, and Greek manners into Italy. Besides these Greek Aborigines, Dionysius seems to talk of certain indigenal natives, who assisted them and the Trojans in founding Alba Longa. But who those Indigenes were, except they were Tuscans, whom he inclines to believe natives of Italy,** does not appear from his account. Whoever were the makers of the bronze implements and some of the lesser vases, they must be supposed in a state of civilization superior to that which Evander improved by the introduction of Greek arts and letters, and which must have belonged to the people living there before the mountain assumed its present shape. * Lib. i. cap. xvii. xviii. xx. + Ibid. cap. ix. Ibid. cap. xxiv. § Ibid. cap. xxx. Ibid. cap. xxxi. L 3 The pottery is sufficiently rude for that age, but, unless all the articles were found together and in the pretended position, nothing can be argued with safety from any of the phenomena. Visconti has gained nothing by showing the remote antiquity of similar manufactures. No one doubted that fact, but the question evidently reduces itself to the assigning these individual interments to a time and nation to which they may be reasonably referred. The inquiry undoubtedly is, supposing the whole discovery to be established, and that nothing has been interpolated, what people ever lived on the Alban hill at any period who might have made these vases ? After my return to England in 1818 I was favoured by an English antiquary with a suggestion which is certainly more ingenious, and it may be thought more satisfactory, than the researches of Visconti. That which puzzled the Italian most has furnished the Englishman with the clue of his conjecture; for those figures which Visconti thinks may be letters, or, perhaps, whole words, like the Chinese characters, have induced him to come to a very different conclusion. The similarity between the Runic "hammer crosses and the marks on the vases of Alba Longa is so great that one might be tempted to maintain their identity, and there is, perhaps, some connexion between both *Sir Francis Palgrave. and the crux ansata of the Egyptian monuments. It is certain that the mythology of the Asi, although its dọctrines may have been clad in another guise, was not confined to the Scandinavian race. And it seems that a character bearing a close affinity to the Runic alphabet was once widely diffused throughout ancient Europe. The national enthusiasm of the northern antiquarians has too often outstripped their judgment, and many of the fanciful analogies of such really excellent authors as Perugakioled and Rudbuck must, unfortunately, be reckoned amongst the dreams of the learned; yet the truths which they have discovered may be easily separated from their delusions. Perhaps a Celtic origin may be ascribed to the tomb. Of the Celtic Taranus we know little; yet there are Roman inscriptions which show that he was worshipped as the Roman Jupiter. And it cannot be denied but that the deity whom the Romans knew as Jupiter was the thunderer of the Northmen. If the superincumbent body of peperino is to be considered as a proof of the remote antiquity of the tomb, it must be referred to the Celtic aborigines of Italy; but if the bed can be considered as a formation of comparatively recent date, then the vase may contain the ashes of some Gaulish chieftain or of a heathen Goth or Lombard. A character resembling the hammer of Thor is seen in inscriptions discovered in Spain, and which resemble the legends of the medals which the Spaniards call the |