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son, who evidently considered the whole | fell from her hand, and they were left in affair as a good joke. William W- got utter darkness. Bring a light, Annie up, crossed over to the officer, and present- for heaven's sake bring a light!" And ing his card, said quietly You are the Peggy groaned as if in agony. "Why man, sir, and I am the boy." don't you bring a light, Annie?" she exIt was dark and late one night when the claimed again. And then explaining to Lanrick and Annet men met in conclave at Major- that her sister was very deaf, the neighbouring manor-house of Annet. she directed him to the parlour on the Suddenly they were disturbed. There was upper landing, whence he soon emerged loud knocking at the door. A troop of sol- followed by Annie with a lamp in her hand. diers occupied the court-yard, and an Eng- The officer and Annie assisted Peggy to lish officer demanded entrance in King the parlour sofa, where she bitterly beGeorge's name. moaned her sprained ankle, and acted an effective little fainting scene. After due attention and condolence, the Major, conducted by Annie, made diligent but fruit

time, indeed, the Jacobite gentleman had fully availed themselves of Miss Peggy's diversion in their favour, and had escaped by a back window. Quickly they put the wild muir and the Tod's glen between them and the house of Annet.

Miss Lily was in her ninety-third year when she was taken away in March, 1829. After her death there was a great sale of the antique furniture and household treasures of Murrayshall.

The Jacobites had little time for thought. Escape at the moment seemed impossible. The lights were extinguished, however, and the conspirators quietly ensconced less search all over the house. By this themselves behind a row of long greatcoats and cloaks hanging from pegs in a deep recess caused by the turn of the staircase. Miss Peggy Stuart, the elder daughter of the house, told her sister Annie to keep quiet in the parlour upstairs and not to stir on any account, whatever happened. Peggy, waving back the servants, then opened the door herself, and informing the officer there were only "lone women" at home, begged he would leave his men outside and come and search the house himself. Major courteously granted her request, apologiz-owners. ing for intruding at such an untimely hour. footsteps passed up and down the old stairPeggy led him upstairs, telling him the case, strange voices echoed through the steps were worn and bad, and begging him rooms. Poor people and little children to be careful how he advanced. At the looked wistfully up at the small-paned winturn of the staircase she redoubled her dows. Old friends turned away sorrowattention, holding the candle very low, so fully from the deserted house. The craggy that the steps might be more distinctly seen. furze-clad rock and the Scotch fir-trees seem The cloaks, the greatcoats, and the hidden to cast a deeper shadow on the old house men were left behind, the officer again since that dreary morning, long years ago, apologizing for the trouble he gave. After when the last of the Jacobite ladies was ascending a few more steps, Peggy stum-carried forth to her resting-place in the bled, gave a loud shriek, the candlestick churchyard of St. Ninian.

The cattle and poultry went to other
The farm was re-let-strange

SELF-ACTING PHOTOGRAPHIC APPARATUS. An invention new to English operators is described in a recent number of the Illustrated Photographer. It is called the "Ophthalmos," and is in reality a camera provided with mechanical contrivances for automatically uncovering and covering the lens and exposing the plate. It is sent up attached to a small balloon without an operator, and at any required height takes a picture of the surface of the earth beneath it, with all the bearings of the compass accurately marked. It has often occurred to the writer of this that a time might come when a system of self-recording photography (microscopic per

haps) might "take note" of the progress of events, such as a battle, or of a spectacle of any kind, such as an eclipse, in a series of successive photographs at brief intervals, showing its whole progress from beginning to end; or the whole series of events in a banking-house, with portraits of every one who entered, and of all their movements, - or in a ceremonial such as a coronation, a marriage, &c. But when this idea shall have been realized, we suppose we must not dare to say that we suggested it. The same satyric grin which now meets the sugges tion, would then meet our claim to it!

Public Opinion.

From The Cornhill Magazine. THE ETRUSCANS, THE ENGLISH OF ANTIQUITY.

for a doom as tragic as that of the cities of the Plain; indeed one more dramatic, for it will be thrown down from its towerOr all the old peoples of Italy that have ing height into a bottomless quicksand made a mark in history, leaving an impress below, which is swallowing in immense on modern civilization, none interest more mouthfuls the mountain on which it stands. than the Etruscans. They have left a writ- Having already engulfed the Church of St. ten language which no one can read; stu- Giusti, it has reached on the north the pendous public works which time fails to ancient walls of the Badia, from which the destroy; and a rich and suggestive art, monks have fled in dismay, leaving their frail often in material, but exquisite in remarkable cloisters trembling on the brink workmanship, which the grave has pre- of a precipice of sand five hundred to a served during a silence of nearly thirty thousand feet deep, which leans over a centuries. Everywhere their cities crowned treacherous abyss of hidden waters, sapping the most picturesque and impregnable the unsolid earth above them with relentless mountain sites, rejoicing in varied views, energy. Each year the distance between pure air, and excessive climbing, as greatly the precipice and the city is growing less, as modern towns delight in the easy access, yet it seems fascinated by the peril. The heavy atmosphere, and cramped scenery of massive walls which have stood firmly on the lowlands. their foundations three thousand years may Their inhabitants were a strong-limbed, help induce a feeling of security in their broad-headed, industrious race, given to ability to outlive this enemy as they have road-building, sewer-making, canal-digging, all others. But the contrast in sensations and nature-taming generally. They were is most startling when, after following their religious too, commercial, manufacturing, circuit for miles in wonder at their hugekeen of business, of course luxurious, not ness, one comes at a single step upon this wholly unmindful of beauty, but preferring tremendous undermining of a mountain the strength and comfort that comes of a which, at an unexpected moment, is despractical view of things: a people in the tined not merely to leave no one stone of end whose hard-earned riches and long- them on another, but to bury them for ever. tested mechanical science failed to save from human sight, and with them the peotheir political being when imperilled by ple who trusted to their strength for safety. an ambitious, war-like neighbour. Still, It is an impressive spectacle, not only of though subdued in the field, their arts and the transitoriness of all human work, but civil polity conquered the conquerors. For of those agencies which are preparing the centuries they ruled the seas, and were earth for new forms and species of existence. the great wave-lords of antiquity. English I comprehend sleeping quietly on the edge in their maritime skill and force, they were of a volcano or during a battle, for there like the English in many other habits and the elements of death have in them that of points of character, especially in their fond- the sublime, which puts the spirit on a level ness for horse-racing and pugilistic encoun- with the occasion; but the thought of the ters. Their origin is lost in the remotest prolonged, helpless strangulation of a whole antiquity of the East. Nevertheless, their city irresistibly sucked into the bowels of earliest civilization comes to us indubitably the earth, is awful. No heroisms can avail filtered through Egyptian and Assyrian in burial alive, and no human sacrifice sources. What we dig up of their primitive work has a decided look of the Nile that prolific mother of antique arts and ideas. Many of their paintings and sculptures bear also a strong likeness to those of Nineveh.

Independently of other inducements, it is worth while to make the tour of the ancient cities of Etruria on account of the loveliness of their situations and the varied beauty of the landscape encircling them. Take, for instance, Volterra, set on high, overlooking the Mediterranean, the fertile Pisan territory, and a Plutonic tract of country at its feet, split and warped into savage fury of chasm and nakedness by internal fires. Its situation marks it finally

can avert the destruction after Nature has sounded the signal of doom. Yet with a degree of stupidity which seems past belief, the Volterrians once refused to permit an enterprising citizen of Leghorn to save their city by draining off the encroaching waters while there was time, on condition of having for himself the land he reclaimed from devastation. Possibly they feared the loss of one of their sights," which are food and raiment to the poor of Italian cities in general, each inhabitant consoling himself with the reflection, "after me the flood." The "sight” certainly is one not to be met in other parts. Go to see it, but do not tarry long.

Orvieto is as firmly as Volterra is loosely placed, on its foundation of rock.

Follow

In treating of Etruscan art, it is not necessary to specify its antiquarian distinctions, but only its general characteristics. The best way to get at these is to study the contents of the tombs. They were excavated and built much after the plan of the dwellings of the living, with a similar disposition of chambers or halls, corresponding to the room required for the dead, except when they took the form of mausoleums or monuments, and were made immense labyrinthian structures, whose ruins now seem more the work of man. Interiorly they were lavishly decorated with painting and sculpture in relief on the walls and ceilings. When

ing the circuit of the perpendicular preci- | in them all a varied succession of surprising pice on which the town stands, its walls rise views which could scarcely be more commany hundred feet in parts, in as straight a pletely pleasurable had the sites of their line as if all built up of masonry. Perugia cities been specially chosen with this end. struggles in a vagabond manner along the crests of several hills or terraces, evincing a desire to get into the rich valleys below. Chiusi with a glorious outlook over two lakes, girt around with a green swell of mountains, whose olive-grounds and vineyards rise and fall until they dash their fragrance against its ugly walls, shows like a dark spot in the bountiful nature around it. The kingly virtues of Persenna are as much lost sight of in his now beggarly capital as is his famous tomb, once a wonder of the world. But what else can be in a nest of excavators whose most productive industry lies in rifling ancestral tombs and fleecing the visitor; not to speak of the dubious first opened, these decorations are quite reputation of the place as an entrepôt for the sale of false antiquities. My landlord could not give a morsel of meat to eat that the teeth could penetrate, but he had to offer his museum of Etruscan antiquities for the modest sum of fifty thousand francs. The ascent to the bedrooms was guarded by a long lugubrious line of cinerary urns, remarkable only for their archaic coarseness. Chiusi is neither clean, cheerful, nor comfortable, but it has its special attractions and much genuine art remaining, although its best museum the Casuciuni has been sold to the city of Palermo.

The Maremma is a vast cemetery of Etruscan cities, but disease and desolation have replaced their once vigorous commercial life. Scarcely a spadeful of earth can be turned up without disturbing the dust of their inhabitants. The same picturesque choice of sites of towns obtains here as elsewhere. Cortona is the queen of them all, though Citta-della-Pieve, garlanded with oak and chestnut forests, looks on a landscape not so diversified but in some details more exquisitely lovely.

fresh and perfect. After an experience of the ghastly relics of modern sepulchres, it is with pleased astonishment one enters for the first time an Etruscan house of the dead. If it be a sepulchre hitherto undisturbed, the visitor finds himself, or he can easily so imagine, in the presence of the original proprietors. The apartments opening one into another have a look of domestic life, while the ornamentation is not confined to mythological or symbolical subjects, but is intermingled with scenes of social festivity, games, picnics, races, theatrical exhibitions and whatever they enjoyed in their everyday world; thus indicating that they fancied they were entering upon a new life corresponding in many particulars with their old. It is another form of the Indian notion of new and better hunting-grounds in the land of the Great Spirit. But the good or evil past had much to do in their minds with the reception that awaited them. Guardian genii, effigies of the avengers of wrong, protectors of the good, symbols of immortality, occult doctrines put into pictorial life, these looked on them from carved I wish I could credit the founders of roofs and frescoed walls, which were further Etruscan cities with a love of the beautiful secured from wanton sacrilege at the hands in nature in regard to the situations they of the living by figures of monstrous serselected. But I fear they had no greater pents and demon heads, or the snake-enliking this way than modern Italians. San- twined visage of the terrible Medusa. There itary considerations and personal security was so much of value to tempt the cupidity led them up the hills to live and to girt of even the heirs in the tombs of the wealthy themselves around with solid walls. The that it was necessary to render them awful plains were damp and unwholesome before as well as sacred to the common imaginathey were drained and planted. Still in "locating as they did, and in disposing their walls and gateways, they must have obeyed a latent instinct of beauty even in a land where nature is so bountiful that it is difficult to go amiss in laying the foundations either of a house or a town. We find

tion. Indeed, there is room for believing that, while in some instances deposits of jewels and other costly objects were made in compliance with the religious customs, they were afterwards covertly withdrawn by means of a secret entrance known only to the persons interested, if not of the family

itself; perhaps left expressly by conscience- | under Grecian influence, with occasional hardened workmen for the sake of plunder. gilding. But, as enough has been already secured

These tombs are the libraries and muby modern excavators to stock the principal seums of Etruscan history. Without them, museums of Europe, it proves that the prac- not only would there have been important tice of burying treasures of art was in gen-gaps in the annals of the people, and, ineral respected among the old Etruscans, who, doubtless thinking to need them again, wished to have them within their ghostly

reach.

On entering a tomb at Volterra, I was surprised to see wine and food on one of the urns in the centre. I asked the peasantwoman, whose flickering torch cast a mysterious shadowy light over the pale figures that looked up to us out of great staring eyes, with their libation-cups or patera held invitingly out, as if to be filled, if the spirits of her ancestors still thirsted for the warm drink of their native hills. "Oh, no," she said, “we put it here to cool for ourselves." It seems one must come to Italy to learn best how to utilize the gravechill otherwise than as a moral refrigerator or theological bugbear.

If the tomb be anterior to the Roman fashion of burning the corpses, we often find the noble lady or great officer laid out in state on bronze biers and funeral couches, looking as in life, with their jewellery or armour on them, as prompt, to all appearance, for the pursuits of love or war as ever. Their favourite furniture, vases, bronzes, articles of toilet, and sometimes children's toys the pet dolls and engraved primers are placed about them ready for instant use. A few minutes' exposure to the air reduces the bodies to dust; but the records of their personal tastes and habits remain. The family scene of some of the sepulchres is made more real by rows of portrait statues in various attitudes placed on urns of sarcophagi, and arranged in order around the chamber, very much after the manner of a fashionable reception. In those days, guests more often reclined at banquets than sat upright. We see them, therefore, commonly in that position, and, if husband and wife, decorously embracing or caressing, the arm of the man thrown lovingly over the shoulder of the partner of his home. Each is draped as in life, wearing their ornaments and insignia of rank. The base, which contains the ashes or bodies, is elaborately sculptured, sometimes in full relief, with mythological or historical scenes, or symbols and events relating to the deceased persons. The oldest and most common of these cinerary urns are coarsely painted and modelled in terra-cotta; but the finer are done in marble or alabaster,

deed, all real knowledge of their life lost, but modern art would also have missed its most graceful and precious models and patterns in bronze, jewellery, and plastic materials in general. These offer a most needed contrast to the graceless, clumsy, meaningless, or vicious styles of ornament which prevailed after the loss of mediaval art, and before a revival of the knowledge of the pure forms of the antique Grecian taught us what beauty really is. We may estimate the extent to which the manufac ture of artistic objects was carried by this people by the fact that from the small town of Volsinium, the modern Bolsena, Flavius Flaccus carried off to Rome 2,000 bronze statues. It is believed by many that the Etruscans were superior to the Greeks in the working of bronze, or anticipated them in perfecting it and the making of fictile vases. Each nation possessed a consummate art of its own, the origin of which in either was equally archaic and rude, while in time both styles in Italy became so intermingled that it requires a practised eye to discriminate between them, especially after Greek colonies settled in Southern Italy and their artists were employed throughout the peninsula.

Etruscan art proper is as thoroughly characteristic and indigenous as is the Greek; but instead of a keen sense of beauty as its animating motive, there was a love of fact. It is essentially realistic, delighting in vigour and strength, and in telling its story plainly and forcibly, rather than with grace and elegance of expression. Before it was subjected to Greek influence, it was more or less heavy and exaggerated, with an unwitting tendency to the grotesque, faulty in detail, often coarse, but always expressive, emphatic, and sincere. Ignoring the extreme principles of Greek selection, it takes more to common nature as its guide. Nevertheless, it has a lofty idealism, or, more properly speaking, creative faculty of its own, which, as we shall see in its best art, inspires its natural truth with a feeling of the sublime. This supernal mystical element, which it has always exhibited, comes of the Oriental blood of the race. Grecian art is poetry; Etruscan, eloquence. Homer inspires both; but the difference between them in rendering the same thought is very obvious.

I find an essential distinction in their | Christendom. Images of terror, however, ideas of death and the future life, as inter- are common, and made as ugly and repulpreted by their sepulchral art. Apparently sive as those of an opposite character are the Greek was so absorbed in his sensuous made handsome and attractive. Still Tyenjoyment, or so shaken in his earlier faiths phon, one of the angels of death, is a beauty by the varied teachings of his schools of in comparison with his more modern namephilosophy, that he formed no very precise sake, and even big-eared, heavy-limbed notions of his condition after death. In its Charon, with his fatal hammer, is mild most spiritual aspect it was vague and and pleasing, beside Spinello's Beelzebub. shadowy, very beautiful and poetical in the Their most successful attempts at ferocious interior sense of some of his myths, but ugliness arrive only at a grotesque exaglacking the exhortative and punitive charac-geration of the negro physiognomy in a form ter of the more fixed and sterner Egyptian of the ordinary human shape. Serpents and Etruscan dogmas. Respect for the figure largely in these paintings, but as gods, beauty, heroism, enjoyment, leaving often in a good as a bad sense, as the symthe hereafter to expound itself, or viewing bol of eternity. The important truth that it fancifully; these were in the main the we find in them is the recognition of an imsentiments and feelings at the bottom of mediate judgment passed on the soul after Greek theology. But the Etruscan was far death, and the substantiality of the rewards more practical and positive, notwithstand-or punishment awaiting it. ing the large admixture of Oriental mysti- The Etruscans were eminently a domestic cism in his belief. Indeed, this positiveness people of warm, social affections. Woman may be traced back to a strong element of evidently was held in equal esteem to men. unquestioning faith in Asiatic ancestors, Everywhere she shares his cares and pleaswhose imaginations were extremely suscep-ures. The position of wife is one of the tible to the spiritual influences of unseen highest honour and influence, subordinated powers, and were also opposed to the pantheistic ideas of the more intellectual Greeks. None had it stronger than the Persians and Jews. Descending from them it rooted itself deeply in the creeds of Christendom firmest and severest in Protestantism. As all know, whenever it has come in collision with science, religion is apt to require the latter to give way, or be denounced as heretical. In this connection it is interesting to note how far the Etruscan idea of the future coincides with Christian ethics.

to no accomplished class of courtesans as in Greece, nor accompanied by the great laxity of manners that at a subsequent period defiled Rome. Indeed, Etruscan art is singularly pure and serious, except as it borrowed from foreign sources its dissolute Bacchic rites. But these were never very popular. Their artists prefer exhibiting the natural sentiments and emotions with a touching simplicity of positive treatment. A favourite subject was the death-parting of families. Husband or wife, lover or friend, embrace The joyous reliance on his fancy which or shake hands tenderly, the dying with an contented his neighbour evidently did not elevated expression of resignation and hope, satisfy the conscience of the Etruscan. Like the survivors with a quiet grief that bethe more northern races, whose harshest speaks a conviction of future reunion. Childoctrines find speech in the diabolism of dren weep around, or are held to the dying Calvinistic theology, he, too, must have a lips to take a last kiss; the pet dog watches positive, material hell, with suitable demons, sympathetically the sorrowful scene; hired but with the especial and noteworthy differ- mourners perform their functions, and the ence that his final doom was not a question whole spectacle is serious and impressive. of faith only, but of works. His good and The dignified courtesy manifested by the evil deeds were accurately weighed by the principals in these farewells shows that no , infallible judges, and he was sentenced ac- doctrinal despair poisoned their latest hour cordingly. Etruscan tomb-sculpture is much on earth, but rather that they looked upon taken up by these solemn scenes. At the the separation as one does a call to a necesdoor leading to eternal torment sits an ex-sary journey. A spirited horse for the man, pectant fiend, and directly opposite is the or a chariot for the woman, with winged atentrance to the regions of happiness, guarded by a good angel. These await the decision of the fate of the soul on trial, which is attended by the good and evil genii, which were supposed to be ever present with the living. The demonism of Etruria is sterner and less mystical than the Egyptian, although not as frightful as that of medieval

tendants, are always depicted quietly waiting outside the house until their services are needed for the journey to the new country. If death has already occurred their torches are reversed. The Greeks loved to look on death in a sensuously beautiful shape, like Endymion sleeping, or Hylas borne off by water-nymphs. They sought to disguise