A PERSISTENT NATIONALITY. 269 



fessedly, much to Tuscan ideas ; that Latin Christianity, 

 the Christianity of all the Western world, took its shape 

 in semi-Tuscan Borne; that the Eoman Empire was 

 largely modelled by the Etruscan Maecenas ; that the 

 Italian renaissance was largely influenced by the 

 Florentine Medici; that Leo the Tenth was himself a 

 member of that great house ; and that the artists whom 

 he summoned to the metropolis to erect St. Peter's and 

 to beautify the Vatican were, almost all of them, 

 Florentines by birth, training, or domicile. I think, 

 when we have run over mentally these and ten thousand 

 other like facts, we will readily admit to ourselves the 

 magnitude of the world's debt to Tuscany social, artistic, 

 intellectual, religious both in ancient, mediaeval, and 

 modern times. 



And what, now, was this strong Tuscan nationality, 

 which persists so thoroughly through all external 

 historical changes, and which has contributed so large 

 and so marvellous a part to the world's thought and the 

 world's culture ? It is a curious consideration for those 

 who talk so glibly about the enormous natural superiority 

 of the Aryan race, that the ancient Etruscans were the 

 one people of the antique European world, who, by 

 common consent, did not belong to the Aryan family. 

 They were strangers in the land, or, rather, perhaps they 

 were its oldest possessors. Their language, their 

 physique, their creed, their art, all point to a wholly 

 different origin from the Aryans. I am not going, in a 

 brief essay like this, to settle dogmatically, off-hand, the 

 vexed question of the origin and affinities of the Etruscan 

 type ; more nonsense, I suppose, has been talked and 



