engraved above (No. 3). It is of extremely thin gold, as thin as tissue paper, and lightly stamped with the detail of form required, being doubtless one of the sepulchral decorations with which occasionally the body of the deceased was dressed, when the more solid jewels were removed, subsequently to the ceremony of the interment. So thin and delicate is the fabric of Etruscan jewellery of this class, that it appears impossible that the specimens should have been perfectly preserved for so many centuries; it is only in the undisturbed solitude of the tomb that such delicately wrought ornaments could have remained uninjured, and when discovered, after their interment of two or three thousand years, it is only by their immediate removal from the tombs to the safe keeping of our great modern museums, that their future preservation can be ensured.
Since the discovery of the Etruscan cemeteries at Vulci, Cervetri, and other places in central Italy, the opening, or as we may say, the desecration, of the ancient tombs have been carried on with amazing activity, and their contents have furnished our museums with a class of ancient art not previously known. It is true that many of the tombs were found to have been plundered before, but by ignorant marauders, who speedily reduced the beautiful jewels they found to mere lumps of gold, to facilitate their sale without raising suspicion. In some cases when the tombs were formed on the slope of a hill, the rains of successive centuries at last washed away by slow degrees the earth which covered the roof of the vault, and ultimately the roof itself, thus exposed, crumbled away during some night of unusual storm, and the next morning the shepherds, leading their sheep to browse on those lonely hills, have looked into a dark chasm, and seen with stupid amazement the warriors of 3000 years ago, lying grim and stark in their bronze armour, with the weapons they had used in life placed carefully about them; and bodies of stately women, with their funeral jewels still upon their forms, perfect for a moment, but crumbling to a handful of dust with the first touch, or the first gust of wind that blew direct upon them, and shrinking into dusty vapours, while the gold, jewels, or bronze armour remained hanging upon the bones of skeletons. To gaze for a moment in superstitions horror; and then, gaining courage in the fuller daylight, to break down the uncovered entrance and snatch the jewels from the ancient bones, was naturally the course of the fortunate shepherd, who destroyed all traces of his discovery by throwing earth into the rifled grave, which was soon overgrown with verdure like any other inequality of the neighbouring ground. It was so that these Etruscan tombs were discovered and rifled in past times, and so that they have been rediscovered in the present day, when their contents are better appreciated and more carefully preserved. The sites of the cemeteries having been once discovered by accident, frequent excavations now take place to discover fresh tombs; and though a large proportion of those discovered are found to have been robbed of their contents by previous invaders, still enough is found intact to render the works of research now carrying on full of interest, as objects of new and unexpected character are being continually discovered.
It appears somewhat extraordinary that our English jewellers have not sought in copying some of these exquisite necklaces of Etruria the means of re-establishing the elegant fashion of highly wrought gold necklaces, which might be made to form so profitable a branch of the goldsmith’s trade. M. Castellani, the celebrated Roman jeweller, has already done this, with very profitable results, and a wedding casket of jewels presented by the people of Rome to the daughter of Victor Emmanuel on her marriage to the King of Portugal, consisted of a series of exquisite copies of ancient Etruscan jewellery, in M. Caatellani’s own collection and the Campana museum. The whole set forms what was anciently termed a cista, or mondo, such as was the nuptial gift of a patrician maiden of ancient Rome. It consists of a diadem, rings, buttons, fibulæ, decorative hair pins, necklace, &c., &c., all delicately wrought in the Etruscan fashion, just as they probably were in ancient Rome, where the fashion of Etruscan work prevailed, much as the rage for imitations of our ancient Celtic fibulæ does at the present time in England.
THE TRANSFORMATIONS OF OUR SOUTHERN COAST.
It is a frequent complaint with geologists, that without travelling there are few opportunities of examining any great convulsions of nature. We have no volcanoes; we lie out of the region of earthquakes; even avalanches and landslips must be sought in Switzerland. In many parts of Great Britain, indeed, we may discover their effects, but then it is rarely possible to meet with any historic evidence of the convulsion. That these complaints, however, are not always well founded, we were glad to acknowledge on a late excursion to the West of England, while studying the phenomena of geological disintegration.
Few coasts are more favourable for this study than that which lies between the oolite of Portland and the granitic and trappean headlands of Cornwall. Off Portland, for instance, rolls the Chesil travelling beach, each pebble carrying a long history in every scratch upon its surface. Passing by the Dorset oolite, we enter upon the lias some way east of Lyme Regis. Its dark-blue flakes are falling from the cliffs with every change of temperature, disclosing wonderful saurians and ammonites, and trampled into thick slime on the beach. Then come the greensand and new red sandstone, so characteristic of the Devon coast, on to Teignmouth. Curious are the transformations visible down this coast from disintegration. Often gigantic columns and huge masses of rock and marl are left standing in the sea, like champions from whom the main line of cliff, which does battle against the waves, has retired. “The Parson and Clerk Rock,” familiar to travellers on the South Devon Line, is an instance of this.
In the case of maritime cliffs, the chief agents in the work of disintegration are the sea below and atmospheric changes above. Constantly beating on their base, the waves sap them, and then their own weight brings down the overhanging masses. Again, frost, heat, and rain are