I found myself when I entered in a gloomy chamber hewn out of a brown arenaceous clay.  The floor was a loose mud, somewhat slippery; and on it I noticed a number of vases, large and small, and of various forms.  They were not like the exquisite painted vases which we are accustomed to associate with the name of Etruscan, but of the simplest and most archaic shapes, formed out of the coarsest clay.  Some of them had a curious squat appearance, with rude figures painted on them; while others of them were about three feet high, of dark-brown earthenware, and were ornamented with some simple device in neutral tints or in very low relief.  They were empty now; but when found they contained ashes and fragments of calcined bones.  Just within the door there were two stone benches, on each of which, when the tomb was opened, was stretched a skeleton, which rapidly crumbled under the pressure of the air into a cloud of dust.  That on the left was supposed to have been a female; and her companion on the right had doubtless been a warrior, judging from the bronze helmet and breastplate, both much corroded, that were left lying on the bench.  He had evidently come by a violent death, for at the back of the helmet was an ugly hole, whose ragged side was outwards, showing that the fierce thrust of the spear had crashed through the face, and protruded beyond the casque.  The combination of cinerary urns containing ashes, and of stone couches on which dead bodies were extended in the same tomb, is curious, showing that both modes of sepulture were practised at this period.  The skeletons found entire were evidently those of the master and mistress of the household, persons of consideration; and the ashes in the jars were probably the remains of the servants and dependants.  On the benches beside the skeletons were a bronze laver and mirror, a simple candlestick, and a brazier used for burning perfumes.  The vases were exceedingly interesting, as the first rude attempts of the Etruscans in an art in which afterwards they attained to such marvellous perfection, and the only relics now remaining of the fictile statuary for which Veil was so celebrated.

But my interest in these objects was speedily transferred to a far more wonderful sight, which the candle of the guide disclosed to me.  On the inner wall, which divided the tomb into two chambers, and on the right and left of the door leading from the one to the other, was a most extraordinary fresco.  Seen in the dim light of the candle passing over the different parts, it had a singularly weird and grotesque appearance.  The colours were as fresh as if they had been laid on yesterday; and the thought at first flashed across my mind that I was gazing not upon a painting which had been sealed up for nearly thirty centuries, but upon the rude attempts at art of some modern shepherd or rustic belonging to the village of Isola, who sought thus to amuse his leisure moments.  But such a thought was dismissed at once as absurd.  No one