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support a teeming population. Sutri and Nepi give us no higher idea 

 of magnificence; and as we proceed and visit Cortona, Assisi, Civita 

 Castellaua, Perugia, Fiesole, and a number of other towns, some still 

 surrounded by the original walls, we are compelled to believe that 

 however wealthy the Etrurians were, thej"- were not so numerous as our 

 imagination had conceived. They seem to have been very like the 

 Saxons in England, located in small companies wherever there was a 

 good bit of land and an adjoining hill where they could build a strong- 

 hold. With a ti-ade comparatively limited, by want of facilities for 

 carriage, and a soil not requiring much labour to make it bring forth 

 abundantly, they must soon have fallen into habits of lu-xury and 

 idleness ; yet, like all dwellers in the country, they fought well for their 

 lands, and did not succumb readily to the fierce Romans, who appear 

 to have had a close resemblance to the Danes and Northmen. Small 

 though the towns are in the interior, none appearing larger than York 

 or Chester, those on the coast, where trade was abundant, seem to have 

 been large and flourishing, whether they belonged to Pelasgi, Etruscans, 

 CumfEau, Grecian, or Roman. Ccere, or Agylla, now Cerveti'i, was 

 nearly five miles in circumference; Volterra and Tarquinii were about 

 the same; and wheu we go farther south, we find that Cumoe was about 

 the size of Bristol, while Baiae, Puteoli, Naples, and Pompeii, may be 

 compared to Beaumaris, Bangor, Hull, and Berwick. 



But we are called from ethnological speculations again to chymistiy ; 

 and in the huge volcanoes scattered up and down we have ample 

 sources from which rivers of theories may flow. Are those gigantic 

 streams of lava, those circular moiuitains, that enclose lakes of twenty- 

 four miles diameter, those piles of ashes, under which whole towns lie 

 buried, are they the results of a central fire rising to the surface and 

 boiling over like water in a kettle, or are they the result of some 

 chymical action going on in consequence of the juxtaposition of sulphur 

 and some other element? We descend to a stream of lava, barely 

 twelve months old, yet everywhere cool, except in one spot, where, in 

 the yawning crevices, you still find a red hot glow, with a perpetual 

 rising of hot sulphurous gas and a sublimation of pure sulphur. 

 Surely, you are inclined to think, if sulphur can thus keep up heat in 

 an isolated part, it is not difficult to suppose that it may in larger 

 quantity produce it. How interesting, too, is it to notice the huge 

 craters of past times, and the smaller ones of to-day. Standing on the 

 summit of "^"^esuvius, we see how much smaller it is than was its 

 predecessor, Monte Somraa, and we can see that the high land behind 

 Naples, the Posilippo hill, is part of a crater whose diameter has been 

 about eight or ten miles, but which became extinct, as the head of the 



