DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.847#0225
206 TARQUINIA.
soon rewarded for his expenditure of trouble and
money, by an enjoyment which he says was the
most exquisite of his life,—the discovery of an
Etruscan monarch with his crown and panoply,
and the peep which he was permitted to have of
the grandeur of the ancient world before the air of
the nineteenth century had dissolved its remnant.
He entirely confirmed the account which I had re-
ceived in Rome of his adventure with the lucumo,
on whom he gazed for full five minutes from the
aperture above the door of his sepulchre. He saw
him crowned with gold, clothed in armour, with a
shield, spear, and arrows by his side, and extended
on his stone bier. But a change soon came over
the figure, it trembled, and crumbled, and vanished
away, and by the time that an entrance was effected,
all that remained was the golden crown and a hand-
ful of dust, with some fragments of the arms. Part of
these became the property of Lord Kinnaird. The
words of Signore Avolta require no confirmation to
ensure my entire belief, but it may be satisfactory
to my readers to know that the appearance which
he saw of a body vanishing is not a thing unknown
elsewhere. And if we substitute centuries for thou-
sands, an anecdote which I lately heard from a
very respectable clergyman is a case in point. He
is rector of a large town in Staffordshire, and
was one day hurriedly summoned to the parish
church to behold the body of one of his predecessors,
a rector who had died nearly three centuries ago,
soon rewarded for his expenditure of trouble and
money, by an enjoyment which he says was the
most exquisite of his life,—the discovery of an
Etruscan monarch with his crown and panoply,
and the peep which he was permitted to have of
the grandeur of the ancient world before the air of
the nineteenth century had dissolved its remnant.
He entirely confirmed the account which I had re-
ceived in Rome of his adventure with the lucumo,
on whom he gazed for full five minutes from the
aperture above the door of his sepulchre. He saw
him crowned with gold, clothed in armour, with a
shield, spear, and arrows by his side, and extended
on his stone bier. But a change soon came over
the figure, it trembled, and crumbled, and vanished
away, and by the time that an entrance was effected,
all that remained was the golden crown and a hand-
ful of dust, with some fragments of the arms. Part of
these became the property of Lord Kinnaird. The
words of Signore Avolta require no confirmation to
ensure my entire belief, but it may be satisfactory
to my readers to know that the appearance which
he saw of a body vanishing is not a thing unknown
elsewhere. And if we substitute centuries for thou-
sands, an anecdote which I lately heard from a
very respectable clergyman is a case in point. He
is rector of a large town in Staffordshire, and
was one day hurriedly summoned to the parish
church to behold the body of one of his predecessors,
a rector who had died nearly three centuries ago,