Page:Once a Week Volume 8.djvu/226

218 or fennel, as for mackerel, of course omitting the wine. Haddocks may be similarly cooked, and a jack so dressed is a dish that need only once be tasted to secure a repetition of its appearance on the table. Many other ways of cooking the jack are made use of, but none are so successful. Having thus brought my fish from his native element to the table of my readers, I there leave him to be discussed by them at their leisure. May “good digestion wait on appetite!" 2em

Etruscans, of whom we catch occasional glimpses in brief passages of the early history of Rome, are so vaguely described, that a reader almost feels inclined to believe that they were merely fabulous rivals and enemies of Rome, invented by Roman historians as a canvas upon which to embroider imaginary victories. Etruria seems to be spoken of as a land of mystery to draw upon for supernatural legends when the wonderful was to be dwelt upon, or when the mystic origin of a prince was to be described. It was scarcely known whether to ascribe to this Etrurian people the superior civilisation, so vaguely ascribed to them by ancient writers, or whether to deem them merely a half barbarous tribe, like the Sabines or the Romans themselves. They had faded into a mythic kind of historical existence, which modern writers would have been rash to invest with a more virtually historical character before the palpable discoveries of recent years had revealed to us those ancient Etruscans, in their very habits, as they lived—still, though in the tomb, wearing their bronze armour, their gold jewels, and their robes of state, and surrounded by their favourite weapons, within those subterraneous chambers, still perfect after the lapse of ages, even to the curious paintings on the walls and roofs; the dead being surrounded by all these tokens of affectionate regret, which seemed to betoken the near presence of the still living, so long after both life and death in that ancient race had ceased to be.

It is the revelations of these ancient Etrurian tombs that have restored the Etruscans to their place in history, and from which these exquisitely wrought jewels of gold and of silver have been recovered, which now form such attractive objects in the British Museum as well as in some of the great museums of the continent. It was from this source that the exquisite Etruscan jewellery of the Gregorian Museum of the Vatican was procured; and the Campana Museum, recently purchased by the French Government, which contains the most extensive collection of ancient Etruscan necklaces that has ever been brought together, not even excepting that of the Vatican itself, derived its riches of that class from the same source. Its original collector, whose name it bears, possessed unusual facilities for forming such a collection, as being the possessor of estates in that part of Italy, formerly within the limits of the ancient Etruria.

To an enthusiastic archæologist these facilities were the source of great temptations, and the whole of a noble fortune was expended in the gradual acquisition of the magnificent collection which has recently been scattered in consequence of the pecuniary embarrassments of its possessor. The first portion, chiefly comprising the specimens of ancient sculpture, found its way to Russia. A smaller portion—chiefly ceramic wares—was purchased by England for the National Museum of Art at Kensington, while the bulk of the collection, containing nearly all the antique jewellery, was purchased by the Emperor of the French, and is destined to form an addition to the vast artistic and archæological riches of the Louvre, under the title of Musée de Napoleon III.

In the Campana collection of ancient Etruscan jewellery, the necklaces alone form a splendid series of eighty-two nearly perfect specimens, besides a number of beautiful fragments.

The art of working in gold was one of the first steps in metallurgy. Gold was more easily worked than any metal known to the ancients; and Homer speaks of stores of it being accumulated in royal treasuries for the purpose of making jewels, &c. In the Bible also are passages, connected with some of the earliest patriarchs, in which jewels of gold are mentioned. Such as those referred to in Genesis, xxiv. 22, as given by Abraham’s servant to Rebekah, “The man took a golden ear-ring of half a shekel weight, and two bracelets for her hands, of ten shekels weight of gold,” &c. These ornaments being, in all probability, beautifully ornamented, as there are other passages in the Pentateuch, which especially refer to ornamental work in metal.

In the earliest records concerning the mythological and heroic age of Greece, anterior to the date of authentic history, jewels are frequently referred to, especially the famous necklace presented to Harmonia as a wedding-present on her marriage with Cadmus, who is said to have received it from Aphrodite or Europa, or from Hephæstus the god of fire, that is to say, so far as fire is indispensable in arts and manufactures, of which he was the originator, in the Greek mythology, (as Vulcan is in the early mythology of Italy, and as Tubal Cain is in the Bible,) teaching man the arts which adorn life. This fabulous necklace, presented by Cadmus to his bride, was said to be most richly and elaborately ornamented, insomuch, that Nonnus, in the story of Cadmus and the foundation of Thebes, which forms part of his long poem, in forty-eight books, known as the , devotes no less than fifty lines to its description.

Previous to the great archæological discoveries of the last three-quarters of a century, it appeared vain to hope for any positive knowledge of the actual form and decorative details of the jewellery of the patriarchs, of the Pharaohs, or of the gold ornaments described by the poets and historians of Greece, or of the exquisitely wrought