. Tour to the sepulchres of Etruria, in 1839. HAPTER IV. TARQUINIA. This we regarded as the most interesting portionof our Etruscan pilgrimage, for besides Tarquiniasclaim to our attention as the capital city of originalEtruria, it was identified in our recollection with themost exciting period of early Roman history. Weare informed by Livy, that Rome received fromTarqninia a race of powerful kings, and was in-debted to them and their Etruscan mother countryfor many of the arts of refinement, badges ofmagnificence, substantial improvements, and ritesof religion, which contributed to build up h
. Tour to the sepulchres of Etruria, in 1839. HAPTER IV. TARQUINIA. This we regarded as the most interesting portionof our Etruscan pilgrimage, for besides Tarquiniasclaim to our attention as the capital city of originalEtruria, it was identified in our recollection with themost exciting period of early Roman history. Weare informed by Livy, that Rome received fromTarqninia a race of powerful kings, and was in-debted to them and their Etruscan mother countryfor many of the arts of refinement, badges ofmagnificence, substantial improvements, and ritesof religion, which contributed to build up herrising grandeur. The crown and sceptre, theivory throne, the robe of honour, and the collegesof augurs and aruspices, with their rites of divina-tion, and their solemn unfolding of the future,all came from Etruria; while the stupendous cloaca,a work which has never been surpassed, and whichastonishes us even among the ruined masses of im-perial magnificence, was begun and completed byi he polished Etruscan race who governed the TARQUINIA. 131 The additional, and in some respects new lights,which are thrown upon the early ages by thehistorical research of our own time, serve totighten the connecting link between Tarquiniaand Rome, and lead us to believe that the infantmistress of the world not only received for herking an able and powerful Tarquinian Lucumo,but was, through Tarquinia, united for a season asan integral part of the great Etruscan common-wealth, and probably formed one of the barriers ofcentral Etruria towards Latium. But it is injus-tice to Etruria to feel for her merely an interestreflected from an upstart state of robbers and out-laws. She raises her crowned head hoary with anti-quity far beyond what we have been accustomed toconsecrate as time-honoured, and beckons us to quitfor a moment the crumbling monuments, whosegrandeur, comparatively modern, are our memorialsof the wrecked Republic and the fallen Empire, inorder to learn of her in those se
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