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families of the land,* cannot, surely, have been without exception imported from foreign countries; but it seems quite natural to suppose that, when the pomp of funerals increased, according to the dignity, the wealth, and the number of the relations of the deceased—when the prodigality in libations, in offerings, and in the funeral banquets, grew to such a height, that in the same sepulchre are sometimes found as many as twenty or more different vases-the most opulent might eagerly covet the foreign vessels of Corinth or of Sicily, or even those of the Nolan or Athenian workmanship, which surpassed all others in beauty. This, in fact, is the cause that vases of these foreign schools are found mingled with many others which belong to our own country, and are of domestic manufacture.

Comparison, and a great deal of experience, decide on this difference of workmanship better than reasoning.....The first in point of antiquity, and the peculiar character of design, are, without doubt, certain vases of a hard and dry style, on which the figures are disposed, one after the other, in uniform symmetry, although sometimes not without life and movement. Most remarkable, above all, is the square fashion of the draperies, which are richly ornamented in the manner of the East, not less than the peculiar character of the armour, which bears devices in every kind of relief-intended perhaps to show the art of embossing (lavori di torentica). But those vases of an archaic style most especially and with great certainty indicate, both in their mechanical workmanship and their painting, a school much earlier than the monuments wrought upon the principles universally adopted in Greek art after Phidias and Zeuxis. Whence it appears probable that this very style, so peculiar to the most ancient Greek painters, was originally derived from the Greeks of Asia Minor, the first of the race who reached any excellence in the arts; thence it may have passed to Corinth, and from thence even to Etruria. There was constant intercourse, two or three centuries after the Trojan war, between the industrious and commercial Corinth, which Homer calls rich, and the shores of Asia Minor. . . . . It is, nevertheless, true that Corinth and Sicyon, if they did not invent the art of working in clay and painting upon it, yet highly improved it, and preserved it for a long time in a most flourishing state. Already, in the first century of Rome, the mutual intercourse and traffic between Etruria and Corinth was frequent, as is shown by the fact of Demaratus, himself a merchant, taking refuge with his hosts at Tarquinia. ... Now, if I have grounds for my opinion, the more ancient workmanship of a great number of the vases at Vulci must be derived from the school of Corinth or Sicyon. It is a peculiarity worthy of consideration, that the gods most anciently and chiefly worshipped at Sicyon-viz., Apollo, Diana, Hercules, and Minerva are exactly the divinities which are found most frequently

As in Vulci alone are found, with Etruscan legends, the Minucian, the Annian, the Aruntian or Aruntilian, the Velian, &c., family names, which are discovered in other inscriptions of central Etruria.

represented

represented on the earthen vessels found at Vulci. These Corinthian vessels, a common merchandise and article of traffic, being of such general use in the sepulchres, were not merely exported to Etruria, but everywhere else. Hence, without going any further, the cause that so many Corinthian urns (idrie) and other painted vases in this archaic style are found in place after place, in the cemeteries at Vulci, as well as in those of Sicily and many parts of Magna Græcia. Perhaps thirty names of the makers and the painters may be read on the vases of the finest description, drawn from the necropolis of Vulci. These, as it appears, were excellent artists for the most part of one and the same school-so uniform is their workmanship, both in the execution of the paintings and the mechanism of the wheel; others—the painters, for instance, of vases with red figures on a black ground-are not only artists of a later period, but of a more refined state of the art. So that it may be considered established, that those which can be truly called Greek, and of foreign manufacture, and which are in great numbers, belong to different periods, and perhaps came in part from the wheels of Attica and in part from other schools.'

We are glad to find that Signor Micali admits the Attic origin of many of these works, that fact being, in our opinion, fully proved by the German writers who have treated on this subject.

We have almost confined ourselves to one question—at least to one race among those ancient peoples of Italy,' whose origin and national character are embraced in these elaborate volumes. We should not, however, do justice to the talent, the learning, and the candour of our author, if we did not, as to the other branches of his inquiry, strongly recommend his work to all who are embarked in such studies, and may have formed their opinion of the value of Signor Micali's contributions to the remote history of Italy from his earlier and more incomplete publication. On the history of the other races, which at an early period peopled the peninsula, he has collected his materials with diligent erudition, disposed them with admirable arrangement, and judged, if not always with conclusive authority, yet never without that good sense, fairness, and calmness, which have a right to candid and dispassionate hearing. The main point on which we differ from his general theory is the greater distinctness with which we appear to ourselves to trace the existence of a great Pelasgic nation, anterior to the Hellenic civilization of Greece, and exercising an important influence on that of Italy. We greatly doubt, as we have shown, the theory of Niebuhr, which would make the body of the Etrurian population, Pelasgicthe dominant race, a northern tribe. The Etrurians, the Rasena, notwithstanding the historical traditions of the Tyrrheno-Pelasgians, we are inclined to suppose a distinct race; but many of the other tribes, whose language had great influence in the formation

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of the Latin tongue, we cannot but consider connected by closer or more remote affiliation with the Pelasgic stock. A German scholar has written a treatise to prove the Identity of the Hindus, the Persians, the Pelasgians, the Germans, and the Slaves;'* without going quite so far, we cannot help thinking that the Pelasgians were the Indo-Teutonic race which spread those remarkable analogies of customs, and still more of language, which connect Greece and Rome with India. The striking similarity, not merely in words, but in grammatical forms and inflexions, between the Greek in some, and the Latin in other and distinct points, can only be accounted for by their transmission through some common parent. And when we find a general tradition of Pelasgians in both countries, and this tradition attaching the same relationship as well as peculiar character to that race, we cannot but think that there is a fair presumption in favour of this theory. But on this point we must break off;-a publication on the Pelasgians, we observe from his correspondence with M. Gerhard, is preparing by M. Panofka; whether it will advance the question much beyond the Hora Pelasgicæ of the Bishop of Peterborough remains to be seen; at all events, the connexion of the eastern and western languages has been much developed since the work of the learned prelate was printed. We will conclude, then, with repeating, that all who take an interest in the Early History of Italy must study this treatise of Signor Micali; and all who would make themselves acquainted with the peculiar character of the ancient Etrurians will find a mine of instruction in the engravings which accompany its text.

ART. VIII.-Pencillings by the Way; First Impressions of Foreign Scenes, Customs, and Manners. By N. P. W. New

York. 1835.

'IT

T is extraordinary,' says the author, how universal this feeling seems to be against America. A half hour incog. in any mixed company in England, I should think, would satisfy the most rose-coloured doubter on the subject.'

This feeling, in which we certainly do not participate, will hardly be diminished, wherever it has hitherto prevailed, by the appearance of these Pencillings.' Mr. N. P. Willis enjoys, we believe, some reputation in his own country as a writer of A volume of his rhymes was lately reprinted here, under the auspices of Mr. Barry Cornwall; but notwithstanding that edi

verses.

Die Identität der Hindu, Perser, Pelasger, Germanen, und Slaven, dargethan aus Sprache, Religion, und Sitte, von F. A. Rauch. Marburg. 1829.

VOL. LIV. No. CVIII.

2 H

tor's

tor's authority, the contents seemed to us of very slender merit

much upon a par with the young ladies' imitations of Wordsworth, Byron, and Moore, which crowd the gilded pages of our own Annuals. Mr. Willis's American fame and glory, however, seem to have procured for him a favourable reception in the society of this country; as indeed all Americans, whatever else they may say against us, must admit, that whenever they have any, even the slenderest, pretensions to personal distinction, they are sure of being individually well treated among us; our houses are opened to them, cæteris paribus, far more freely than to any other foreigners; and we approve of this on the whole, though we have observed not a few cases in which the results of such liberality were by no means agreeable. In Mr. Willis's case, the result has been, that while visiting about in London and in our provinces as a young American sonnetteer of the most ultra-sentimental delicacy, he was all the time the regular paid correspondent of a New-York journal, in which, week after week, appeared his prose reports of what he saw and heard in British society-these same fifty letters which now lie collected on our table, and which, we greatly fear, will tend to throw obstacles in the path of any American traveller who may happen to honour England with his presence during the next season or two. Mr. Willis's prose is, we willingly admit, better than his verse: it has many obvious faults, especially those of exaggeration and affectation; but it is decidedly clever, and the elements of what might be trained into a really good style are perceptible. He has depicted some of our northern scenes in a not unpleasing manner; and his descriptions of customs and manners' are often amusing-bearing the impress of shrewdness and sagacity, but deriving their power of entertainment chiefly from the lights which they reflect on the customs and manners of the author's own country. For it must be obvious, that when a clever foreigner considers anything he meets with in our society as deserving of being painted in detail to his own fellow-countrymen, that something was new to himself; and accordingly, from Mr. Willis's elaborate portraitures of English interiors, we may, at all events, form a fair guess what American breakfasts, and dinners, and table-talk are not; or, at all events-and this we strongly suspect would be nearer the truth of the case-of what these things are not in those circles of American society with which the individual writer had happened to be familiar before he crossed the Atlantic.

We advise our readers to keep this last consideration in view: it would certainly not at all surprise us to hear that many of this person's discoveries had been received with a share of ridicule in

his own country; that within her limits, had the élite of American houses been opened to him as liberally as some of those of the English nobility seem to have been, he might have found many of the features which he has thought so worthy of minute delineation here. We can ourselves bear witness that the general tone of the best society of the Old World does not impress all American travellers with the same startling effect of novelty which it appears to have produced on the mind of Mr. Willis. In short, we are apt to consider him as a just representative-not of the American mind and manners generally, but only of the young men of fair education among the busy, middling orders of the mercantile cities; and here again we find nothing to make us recall the notion expressed in a former article, that in our own provincial towns, a diligent observer might very probably discover, at this day, the counterpart of almost every trait which certain English travellers have dwelt upon, as exclusively characteristic of the domestic society of the United States. We can easily fancy a smart young country attorney, or one of Mr. Joseph Hume's new parliamentary nominees, being affected much as Mr. Willis was, by a casual inspection of some of those English customs,' which Mr. Willis has thought as strange and foreign as if he had witnessed them in Japan. To such persons, indeed, we are, as is well known, indebted for most of our own late Novels of Fashionable Life;' and perhaps Mr. Willis may see reason to regret that he had not thrown his materials into that form of composition. A few adulteries, a divorce, and a duel, would have cost him little trouble; and for the rest, it would have only been to travestie the names which he has now produced with as little reserve as English voyagers have been used to bestow on those of the kings and dukes of the Guinea coast.

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In the course of his wanderings, however, Mr. Willis was fortunate enough to be domesticated for a season in some of the most virtuous as well as refined of our noble circles; and we shall extract, as a more than commonly favourable specimen of his style, some passages from his Letters written at Gordon Castle, in the autumn of 1834.' Our readers will be forcibly reminded of Crabbe's Learned Boy' staring through Silford Hall at the apron-string of Madam Johnson;' but mixed with this there are now and then bits of solid, full-grown ignorance and impertinence, worthy of Baron d'Haussez himself;-and over not a few of the paragraphs a varnish of conceited vulgarity, which— call it either Yankee or Birmingham-is far too ludicrous to be seriously offensive. With what feelings the whole may have been perused by the generous lord and lady of the castle themselves, it is no business of ours to conjecture. We repeat that we have

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