of the cemeteries of Pisa. The tombs are set in soil brought in ships

from the Holy Land ages ago. To be buried in such ground was regarded by

the ancient Pisans as being more potent for salvation than many masses

purchased of the church and the vowing of many candles to the Virgin.

Pisa is believed to be about three thousand years old. It was one of the

twelve great cities of ancient Etruria, that commonwealth which has left

so many monuments in testimony of its extraordinary advancement, and so

little history of itself that is tangible and comprehensible. A Pisan

antiquarian gave me an ancient tear-jug which he averred was full four

thousand years old. It was found among the ruins of one of the oldest of

the Etruscan cities. He said it came from a tomb, and was used by some

bereaved family in that remote age when even the Pyramids of Egypt were

young, Damascus a village, Abraham a prattling infant and ancient Troy

not yet [dreampt] of, to receive the tears wept for some lost idol of a

household. It spoke to us in a language of its own; and with a pathos

more tender than any words might bring, its mute eloquence swept down

the

long roll of the centuries with its tale of a vacant chair, a familiar

footstep missed from the threshold, a pleasant voice gone from the

chorus, a vanished form!--a tale which is always so new to us, so

startling, so terrible, so benumbing to the senses, and behold how

threadbare and old it is! No shrewdly-worded history could have brought

the myths and shadows of that old dreamy age before us clothed with

human

flesh and warmed with human sympathies so vividly as did this poor little

unsentient vessel of pottery.

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The Innocents Abroad