part of a lyre, and wooden flutes discovered near Athens; a gilt myrtle crown; glass mosaics from the Parthenon; iron knives and fetters from Athens; a jar that once held the famed Lycian eye ointment; one of the bronze tickets of a judge; and leaden weights.  Hercules is vigorously at work in the groups of the next case (95), and herein are figures of Victory and Fortune; two sphinxes, and other groups.  The head of Polyphemus appears prominently in the 96th case; and in the remaining cases miscellaneously grouped, are ancient dice, some of which have been loaded, suggesting the antiquity of roguery; ivory hair pins; bronze needles; glass beads; fragments of cornelian and other cups, and glass; bronze figures of animals; inlaid and enamel work; styli for writing upon wax; ancient medical instruments; and old Roman finger-rings.

Over the Egyptian cases are deposited fac-similes of paintings of a tomb at Vulci, discovered in the year 1832.  These represent various ancient games of racing and leaping.  Over the cases 38-58 are other fac-similes from a tomb, also at Vulci, in a mutilated condition; and against the southern wall are the ceilings of the tomb.  Having examined these things the visitor should proceed on his southward course, and, passing through the southern entrance of the bronze room, enter the fine apartment, known as the Etruscan room, in which the

ETRUSCAN VASES

are arranged.  These are a series of earthen vases discovered in Italy.  These painted vases are the spoil from the tombs of the ancient Etruscans.  The Etruscans inhabited the northern parts of Italy, and flourished there in a state of comparative civilisation, when the rest of the Peninsula, save where the Greeks were busy on its southern shore, was in a barbarous state.  The Etruscan tombs present various degrees of ornament according to the wealth of their occupant, but in all of them painted vases of some description are found.  It is maintained by many learned men that these beautiful vases were not a native manufacture, but were bought by the Etruscans of the Greeks of Southern Italy, who imported them from the famous potteries of Athens.  The Greek inscriptions on some of these vases, and the Greek subjects from which the decorations are taken, tend strongly to confirm this hypothesis.  It is, however, altogether a mystery why the Etruscans surrounded their dead with these vases.  They were not used to hold human bones, nor to contain food for the deceased; but that the Etruscans held them in high estimation as sepulchral ornaments is certain from the fact that they are found universally in their tombs, the finer and more elaborate in the sepulchres of the rich, and the coarser and plainer kinds in the graves of the poor.  The visitor will do well to walk carefully round this room in which the Etruscan vases belonging to the Museum are deposited.  They are arranged in the supposed chronological order in which they were manufactured; the clumsy and coarse ware being placed in the first case, as exhibiting the dawn of the potter’s art, and the more elaborate and highly-wrought specimens being arranged in regular order of improvement in the succeeding cases.