268 A PERSISTENT NATIONALITY. 



extermination, Most people still vaguely fancy to them- 

 selves, to be sure, that, when Eome conquered and 

 absorbed Etruria, the ancient Etruscan ceased at once to 

 exist — was swallowed, as it wore, and became forthwith, 

 in some mysterious way, first a Roman, and then a 

 modern Italian. And, in a certain sense, this is, no 

 doubt, more or less true ; but that sense is decidedly not 

 the genealogical one. Manners change, but blood 

 persists. The Tuscan people went on living and marry- 

 ing under consul and emperor just as they had done 

 under lar and Incumo ; Latin and Gaul, Lombard and 

 Goth, mingled with them in time, but did not efface 

 them ; and I do not doubt that the vast mass of the 

 population of Tuscany at the present day is still of prc- 

 pouderatingly Etruscan blood, though qualified, of course 

 (and perhaps improved), by many Italic, Celtic, and 

 Teutonic elements. 



Again, when we remember that Florence, Pisa, Siena, 

 Perugia are all practically in Tuscany, and that liorence 

 alone has really given to the world Dante and Boccaccio, 

 Galileo and Savonarola, Cimabue and Giotto, Botticelli 

 and Era Angelico, Donatello and Ghiberti, Michael 

 Angelo and Raffael, Leonardo da Vinci and Macchiavelli 

 and Alfieri, and a host of other almost equally great 

 names, it will be obvious to every one that the problem 

 of the origin of this Tuscan nationality must be one that 

 profoundedly interests the whole world. Nay, more, we 

 must remember, too, that Etruria had other and earlier 

 claims than these ; that it spread up to the very walls of 

 Rome ; that the Etruscan element in Rome itself was 

 immensely strong ; that the Roman religion owed, con- 



