dotus. The same legend, probably derived from the same author, is told by Servius:* and was deemed by most of the ancients to be a credible account of the origin of the Tyrrhenian Etruscans, as is sufficiently evinced by the language employed by them in speaking of the Etruscans. Thus, this people is called by Silius Italicus, Mæonia Gens. The same belief has been entertained by many modern scholars of note, by Cumberland, Larcher, Dempster, Lanzi, etc.,— of course, without acknowledging the correctness of its improbable details. On the other hand, its reasonableness has been strongly denied by Cluverius, Freret, Heyne and others. New hypotheses have been proposed, some of which are sustained by the authority of very distinguished names. Bonarotti supposed the Etruscans (i. e. Tyrrhenians) to have been descended from the Egyptians. This is substantially Mrs. Gray's notion. Maffei and Mazocchi traced them to the Canaanites, Swinton discovered their ancestors in the Phoenicians, Pelloutier and Bardetti conceived them to have sprung from the Celts; Freret from the Rætians, and Hervas from the ancient Cantabrians. Mrs. Hamilton Gray "thinks it not doubtful, borne out at least by every collateral proof, that they were a colony from the great and ancient city of Resen, or RSN, as it is written in the Hebrew Bible, the capital of Aturia in the land of Assyria," etc. From the place of their origin, they wandered or were carried into Egypt, when they included among the Hyksos, and whence, being expelled or emigrated, they settled in Etruria. The chief argument on which this conjecture is founded, is, that the letters RSN of Resen occur in the name of the TyRSeNi. But, by the same reasoning, we might prove that Savannah, Memphis and Boston were respectively founded by Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. Mrs. Gray does, indeed, endeavour to confirm this supposed origin of the Tyrrhenians, by an imagined similarity between the institutions, the customs, and the architecture of Egypt and Etruria, yet we cannot wholly refrain from conceiving, that the secret of Mrs. Gray's adoption of her wild and peculiar theory, is truly to be found in the supposed resemblance of names, which happen to possess three conso nants in common. It is but justice, however, to remark that, * Serv. ad Virg. Æn. i., 71. + Silius Italicus, Punic, lib. viii., 486. + Mrs. Hamilton Gray, Hist. Etruria, vol. 1, p. 21, chap. 1. though she does derive the TyRSeNi in this manner from RSN, yet she first identifies, or thinks that she has identified, the Tyrseni with the RaSeNa, between which name and ReSeŃ there is an obvious resemblance, though nothing that would support her theory. The race of the Rasena, whom Mrs. Gray considers identical with the Tyrrhenians, is first mentioned by Dionysius. of Halicarnassus. He discovered in Etruscan history the traces, as he thought, of two distinct and original races, the Tyrrhenians and the Rasena; and this supposition has been adopted by the most profound scholars who have written on the difficult subject. Muller, in his celebrated work on the Etruscans, considers the Rasena to have been the rude and primitive population of the northern region of Italy; he regards their origin as undiscoverable, but thinks that they received their language, their civilization and their institutions, by their admixture with the Tyrrhenians or Pelasgians from Lydia. Niebuhr differs from him in regarding the Pelasgians, that is the Tyrrhenians, as the original inhabitants of the country, and the Rasena as barbarous conquerors, who poured down from the Rhætian Alps, dispossessed them of their territories, but received at their hands the rudiments of their after arts and refinement. Certain it is, that the Etruscans must either have had a more frequent and intimate communion with Greece in ante-historic periods, or they must have derived from the Pelasgians those numerous ele ments of their polity and society which assimilate them to the Greeks. The process of reasoning, by which Mrs. Gray endeavors to establish the Syro-Egyptian origin of the Etruscans, is singular, but so rash and fanciful that it hardly merits serious refutation, at least, until it be confirmed by new discoveries or stronger evidence than she has been able to adduce. We do not object to her theory that it is a speculation raised upon a bold inference, but that its truth depends upon many separate inferences, wholly disconnected with each other, and each deduced by the same daring ratiocination which characterizes the main conclusion. The similarity, supposed by Mrs. Gray to exist, between the Etruscan ruins and the monuments of Egyptian architecture, may be more fanciful than real; assuredly the resemblance is equally great between the latter and the monstrous piles raised by the now forgotten Mexicans. It may VOL. VII.-NO. 14. 21 be, that in all three cases, people of like tendencies and with analogous wants devised, in the infancy of art, structures which bore upon them the marks of apparent imitation. And, if we admit that the human mind is just as strictly subjected to certain fixed and general rules of action, as the planetary orbs themselves, this would seem by no means improbable; at least, it would be better to avow our undoubted ignorance under this form, than to suppose that intimate connection between the Etruscans and the Egyptians on this ground, which we would not venture to assert as having existed between the Egyptians and the Mexicans or the Peruvians. The legend of the Tyrrhenians having entered Italy by sea, will not establish the bold assumption that they must have come over from Egypt in Phoenician vessels; for there might have been so far a use of marine craft by other people, as to furnish a foundation for this tradition, without having recourse to Tyre and Sidon, as the only power possessing ships in that day. Was no craft used in Greece, sufficient for the navigation of the Adriatic, previous to the Argonautic expedition? Mrs. Gray would answer no: but in what intelligible manner can we conceive the islands of the Pacific to have been peopled, if we take this narrow view, or even admit them to be now inhabited, notwithstanding the evidence of our senses refutes our logic. We think it barely necessary to allude to the use which Mrs. Gray makes of the impression of a ship on Etruscan coins, as confirming the view which we have objected to in the preceding paragraph. Until she establishes the date of the coinage, no reply is requisite. In addition to all that can be specifically alleged against Mrs. Gray's separate propositions, we admit that the general course of her reasoning renders us chary of assenting to any of her fanciful inferences. Great caution should be employed before assenting to any proposition, emanating from one reasoning backwards like herself, with so much dexterity in her sophistries. The Romans borrowed much from the Etruscans, therefore, whatever institutions we discover at Rome, must previously have existed in Etruria. This sophism is of continual recurrence in her pages. In the same way we might argue,-the United States are indebted to Great Britain for many of their institutions, -a King and a House of Lords exist in Great Britain,-"argal," as Shak speare says, a King and a House of Lords exist in the United States; or still more obviously, boots are made out of calfskin, ergo, a calf is made out of boots.-But let us leave Mrs. Gray to her dreams. The Tyrrhenians were probably Pelasgians, but whether the Rasena were of Eastern or Northern extraction, we can only say to either hypothesis-non probatum est. There is much of an Oriental complexion undoubtedly among the Etruscans. Their hierocracy is neither wholly Druidic nor wholly Oriental, but it seems a mean between both,-approximating still more, in some respects, to the Brahminic: yet it may have been independent of all,-at least it may be so regarded until the identity of the others is proved. We would fain, if we had time, devote some space in this Review to an examination of the singular history of the Etruscans. Civilized, yet without a literature,-intelligent and powerful, yet without renown,-they attract and merit our admiration, yet they offer little but the novelty and mystery which now invest their career, to engage our sympathy. They present the singular anomaly of a people deliberately fixing a limit to their duration, and sinking with the sullenness of despair, by slow degrees, into that grave which for centuries they had anticipated. It was the will of the gods, that after so many cycles, their power, their glory, their national existence, should be terminated; and they bowed to the will of heaven, without a murmur at their predestined fate. Their proximity to Rome gave form and symmetry to the Eternal City, but it drained the life's-blood from themselves and the nation fell, in the era of Rome's glory, by that Sylla, who most fully represented the system of landed aristocracy, which had been introduced from among themselves into the bosom of the Roman people. But we must refrain from additional remarks,-our limits forbid us further discussion of this interesting topic. The materials for a history of Etruria are not yet collected,-and, perhaps, it is only ordinary prudence to wait for a day of greater illumination, which may be now dawning, before we attempt any systematic examination of the history and constitution of the Etruscan states. And yet we leave the subject with regret, though we are thus delivered from a further acquaintance with Mrs. Gray, and Mrs. Gray's work. H. ART. II.-A Drama of Exile, and other Poems. By ELIZABETH BARRETT BARRETT, Author of "The Seraphim, and other Poems." Two volumes. New-York: Henry G. Langley. 1845. THE first knowledge we had of Miss Barrett, was from an article that appeared in the London Quarterly Review, a few years since, where her claims as a poet were discussed at the same time with seven or eight other "modern English poetesses." An exquisitely beautiful lyric, on Cowper's Grave, quoted from her, remained in our memory, after the unfamiliar name was forgotten, till recalled afterwards by association with a poem of striking originality, published in one of the Ladies' Magazines of Philadelphia. We rejoice now that a collection of many poems, from her pen, is likely to extend her reputation widely through this land; to make her known and loved among that American people, to whom, she says, her love and admiration have belonged, as long as she has felt proud of being an English-woman, and almost as long as she has loved poetry itself. The American edition of "The Drama of Exile," etc., precedes the English one by a step, a step suspended for a moment, that the author, "by a cordial figure, may kiss the soil of America, and address her thanks to those sons of the soil, who, if strangers and foreigners, are yet kinsmen and friends." It may be hoped that this cordial spirit will be reciprocated by every American reader, in the reception of these interesting volumes. The time has passed when prejudices existed against learning in women; any "elderly objections" on that score would subject the cavillers themselves to contempt; but the reader of Miss Barrett's productions may well be startled at the demand she makes continually on his learning, to understand her allusions and analogies. A long continuance of ill health having rendered her a prisoner in her own apartment for years, she has solaced her pain, and sweetened her seclusion, by the most unwearied devotion to study. Probably she owes it, in part, to these circumstances, that she is the most erudite poetess living; that her attainments in the classics are extraordinary; that she has written elegant Latin verses, and made fine translations from Eschylus, besides being the author of sundry criticisms on the Greek poets; that she is familiar with Hebrew, and is even suspected of |