Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia Part 25

Irrespective of climate, in these we find his home, whether among the Celts of the frozen regions of the North, or the Arabs of the stony wastes bordering on the Erythrean Sea, in the Libyan deserts, or in the sandstone rocks of Southern Africa. There one still sees the pygmy Bushmen, perhaps the last existing Troglodyte race, the very reverse of the Cyclops in stature, but, like them, their hand against every man's, unchanged by ages in the midst of African tribes of considerable civilisation, neither sowing nor pasturing, but living on roots, berries, and grubs, like other aboriginal races, which sprang into existence with the forests through which they roam, and the various brutes which shared with them the possession of the soil:

"c.u.m prorepserunt primis animalia terris, Mutum et turpe pecus." HOR. _Sat._ i. 3.

But the traditions of Polypheme and his Cyclops represent them as advanced beyond this first rude stage of society, though they still adhered to their ancestral caves. They were robbers, no doubt; at least, they plundered and made captive unfortunate mariners thrown on their sh.o.r.es. Perhaps they feasted on their captives, as American Indians and South-Sea islanders are reported to have done. This may be doubted; but at least the cannibal feasts of the Sicilian aborigines were but _bonnes bouches_ occasionally thrown in their way. They had better means of subsistence. Polypheme was a shepherd, and so were all his clan. Picture him, as described by Virgil[86], descending from the mountains, probably at eventide, leaning on his staff, with his shepherd's pipe hanging on his bosom, surrounded by his flocks, and leading them to the shelter of some cavern on the sh.o.r.e; and we have a pleasant scene of pastoral life. Such were all his tribe, a pretty numerous one, comprising one hundred males, with their families, each having a flock as large as their chiefs. They led a nomad life, "_errantes_" between the mountain pastures and the plains on the coast[87].

Now, if we may be allowed to separate these facts, which seem genuine, from the fictions with which they are blended, we find the aborigines of Sicily, though barbarous, in a somewhat advanced stage of social life beyond that when we are told they roamed in the woods and fed on acorns.

Such we may justly presume, divested of poetical fiction, was the condition of the aborigines of the neighbouring island of Sardinia, the largest in the Mediterranean except Sicily, when the first foreign colonists landed on its coast. And such, after the lapse of more than thirty centuries, are the Sarde shepherds of the present day, generally lawless, sometimes robbers, making the caves of the rocks their shelter, and their flocks and herds providing them with food and clothing.

Tenacious, above all other European races, of the traditions and customs of their forefathers, when they point to structures of the highest antiquity scattered on their native soil, and call them "_Sepolture de is Gigantes_"-as we now have some idea what these giants were,-may we not find reason to accept their tradition, and consider these monuments as the tombs of the chiefs and first founders of their aboriginal race.

Still, it may be objected that the ancient legends relating to giants are too fabulous to admit of any sound theories being built on them; and some have even gone so far as to reject all the received accounts of families or tribes of men of gigantic stature, as worthy only of the belief of credulous ages. It may indeed be difficult to imagine whole districts and countries peopled with gigantic races so formidable that we can hardly conceive any other people subsisting in contact with them.

But that individuals, and even families, of extraordinary stature and strength existed in the earliest ages cannot be denied, except by those who regard the narrative of Scripture as equally fabulous with the fictions of the poets; although the statements are literal and exact, occur in a variety of incidental notices, and are confirmed by discoveries related by authors of good repute.[88]

A solution of the difficulty may, perhaps, be found in the consideration, that, as even now we find families and races exceeding in stature and strength the average of mankind, there is still more reason to believe in the existence of such phenomena in the youth of the generations of man, when a simple mode of life, abundance of nutritious food, and a salubrious atmosphere, gave to all organic beings huge and sinewy forms. Such might be the special privilege of the Rephaim, and other tribes of which we read. But while the rank and file, as we may call them, of the nation, though tall and robust, might not much exceed the average height of the human species, the chiefs and heroes who took their posts in the van of battle may have attained the extraordinary dimensions recorded of them; and, their numbers being magnified by terror and tradition, the attributes of the cla.s.s were extended to the whole tribe. Thus the poets gave the name of Cyclops to all the aboriginal inhabitants of Sicily, though the Cyclops, properly so called, are represented by them as a single family, sons, as before mentioned, of Neptune and Amphitrite.

That the _Sepolture de is Gigantes_ may be considered the tombs of the chiefs or heroes of the aboriginal inhabitants of Sardinia seems to be generally allowed; and the opinion receives some confirmation from a pa.s.sage in Aristotle's "Physics," where, treating of the immutability of time, notwithstanding our perception or unconsciousness of what occurs, he incidentally ill.u.s.trates his argument by the expression:-"So with those who are fabulously said to sleep with the heroes in Sardinia, when they shall rise up."[89]

The best authorities being thus led to the conclusion that the Sarde aborigines were a giant race, the question remains whether the Nuraghe had the same origin as the Sepolture; and, pa.s.sing by some trivial objections to this hypothesis, we are disposed to adopt Mr. Tyndale's conclusion, that-"the coincidence of two such peculiar monuments in the same island, their non-existence elsewhere, and their being both indicative of some abstract principle of grandeur and power, practically carried out in their construction, are strong reasons for the presumption that they may have had some mutual reference to each other,-as burying places, temples, and altars, and consequently were works of the same times and the same people."

Perhaps it may be objected, with some show of reason, that a people so rude and so primitive as the aborigines, could not have possessed the skill required for the construction of such buildings as the Nuraghe; so that they must be a.s.signed to a later age. But we are informed in Genesis that, among some families of mankind, not only useful, but ornamental, arts were taught before Noah's flood![90] and, without inst.i.tuting an inquiry how soon the inventive and mechanical faculties of mankind were more or less developed in various countries, we may venture to a.s.sume that, before the historical period, before navigation had conveyed the higher arts of civilisation to distant sh.o.r.es, the aboriginal races, generally, were not incapable of erecting the ma.s.sive structures attributed to them by universal tradition, and which, defying the ravages of time, still remain the sole monuments of lost races, on which the puzzled antiquary can hope to decipher the records of their existence and condition.

To rear the lofty perpendicular monolith, to set up the tall stele as the headstone of a grave, to lift and poise the ponderous rocking-stone, to raise and fix the ma.s.sive impost of the trilithon, or the slab covering a sepoltura, a cromlech, or a cistvaen; (for the remark applies to Celtic as well as Mediterranean antiquities), to heap up, not Pelion on Ossa, but untold loads of earth and stone to form the conical tumulus over the chambers of the dead, to build "Cyclopean" walls, and construct the cone of rude but solid masonry, with its cavernous recesses,-all these are the works we should just expect from races of mankind when emerging from primitive barbarism, in the youth of the species, and possessed of enormous strength of limb.[91] Those who reared these works are supposed to have been in possession of some knowledge of the pulley, the lever, and the incline; but, after all, giant strength must have been the main fulcrum for such operations. Had there been ornament, sculpture, or inscriptions on these primeval monuments, our thoughts might have been carried forward to a later age, when colonisation from the East brought in its train the arts which there first undoubtedly flourished.

That the Sardinian antiquities of the earliest age are unique, that this is the case in other parts of the world, every primitive people having, with certain resemblances, a peculiar style in its ancient monuments, that none such as these are found in the countries from whence the first colonists migrated, nor are described in their records, are facts strengthening the argument for their being of indigenous origin. That the forms of these structures scattered over the world are generally pyramidal, often rounded, and sometimes spiral, tells nothing to the contrary. The cone, as Father Bresciani observes, was more graceful to the eye, more easy of construction, more durable, and, perhaps, connected with some mysterious ideas of Eternity, or the circling course of the heavenly bodies. Such was the form of the first great building on record, the Tower of Babel, as we have it represented; the type in many respects of the Sarde Nuraghe. Nor is it an unreasonable conjecture that the alien people, mysteriously alluded to in Genesis, as mixing with the children of G.o.d, having seduced the most froward of the chosen race, were the instigators and planners of the profane enterprise. "Go to --,"

said a man to his neighbour, as the marginal translation renders the pa.s.sage,-"let us make bricks, let us build a tower whose top may reach to heaven."[92]

"There were giants in those days,"-men not only of gigantic forms, but imbued with grand ideas. The structures included among the number of their monuments are, as just observed, "indicative of some abstract principle of grandeur and power, practically carried out in their construction." In the strength of their might, the t.i.tanic race bade defiance to the deities of Olympus, with whom they are poetically represented as combating; but that does not preclude our supposing that, in common with all the generations of man, however barbarous, the giant races had their religious instincts, their altars, their rites.

Reverence, also, for the memories of their departed heroes, of their progenitors, was a common feeling, most powerful in the earliest times.

In these two principles we trace the ideas to which the mysterious monuments of the ancient Sardes owe their origin, and thence we arrive at a reasonable conclusion respecting their object and uses.

Researches the most extended and the most profound, have failed to penetrate the obscurity in which the mists of ages have enveloped the origin of the primeval monuments of all nations, and of the people who founded them. Something may have been contributed towards the solution of the difficulties surrounding the subject, if we have been able to connect existing monuments with a rude race of extraordinary strength, the supposed giant-builders of those ancient structures. Such buildings we discover in various parts of the world, varying in their details, but similar as respects their simple but ma.s.sive and durable forms. Gigantic stature and strength of limb we consider to have been the essential requisites, in the infancy of art, for transporting and raising the ponderous materials; and these properties were characteristics of the races of which, and of their Herculean labours, we find everywhere corresponding traditions.

In the absence of a satisfactory reply to the inquiry, whence, when, or how the giant race reached Sardinia, we are willing to accept the alternative, as regards the founders of the Nuraghe and its other ancient monuments, that these structures were the work of the autocthonoi, the aboriginal inhabitants. But we embrace the theory in a different sense from that in which it is proposed; suggesting that the so-called giants themselves may have been the autocthonoi, and not immigrants; and the remark is generally applicable. The etymology of the words used by the Greeks and Romans, to designate the aboriginal races, supports the conjecture of their ident.i.ty; for, as already shown[93], the term "giant" (???a?) is not descriptive of extraordinary strength, but, equally with the phrases _autocthonoi_, _terrigenae_, and _aborigines_, signifies "the earth-born," the natives of the soil.

Further than this we cannot here pursue the inquiry. In a work of this description, it would be idle to speculate on the means by which aboriginal races, as well as a peculiar fauna and flora, were planted in distant lands, whether islands or remote continents, on which they have been found established by colonists and navigators, from the earliest to the latest times. Ethnologists have laboured to solve the difficulties surrounding the subject; with what success, those who have studied their works must decide for themselves.

The Sardinian Nuraghe are probably among the oldest structures in the world, and may therefore be reasonably considered the works of an aboriginal race; but their origin, and that of the founders, are equally involved in impenetrable mystery. Their rude, but ma.s.sive and shapely, cones have survived the ruin of the sumptuous edifices of Babylon and Nineveh, of Ecbatana and Susa, of Tyre and the Egyptian Thebes. Like the pyramids of Egypt, they have witnessed, from their h.o.a.ry tops, the current of untold centuries rolling onwards, wave after wave, in its turbid course. They have marked the rise and the fall of empires, the vicissitudes of fortune, the illusory hopes, the vain fears, and the insatiable desires of successive generations of men, whose brief span of existence has been that of a moment compared with the centuries that have looked down from their summits. But unlike the Pyramids, whose mysteries are partially unveiled, they give no note by which their age or their history may be discovered. Mute on their solitary mounds, they give no answer to the inquiries of the traveller or the learned, when questioned,-what people of Herculean strength and undaunted will reared their ma.s.sive walls, wrought the dark cells under the cover of their domes, and raised the ponderous slab which crowns the cone? No image of man, no form of beast, neither symbol nor inscription, are sculptured or graven on the solid blocks, within or without, to tell their tale. Well, then, may the thoughtful traveller, contemplating with silent wonder these mysterious cones, soliloquise in some such sort as this:-"Surely these structures must have been raised before men had learned the arts of writing and engraving, for how many thousands of the Nuraghe were built, in successive periods, without their founders having acquired the faculty of inscribing on them the name of a G.o.d or a hero, for a memorial to future generations."

CHAP. x.x.xVI.

_Oristano.-Orange-groves of Milis.-Cagliari.-Description of.-The Cathedral and Churches.-Religious Laxity.-Ecclesiastical Statistics.-Vegetable and Fruit Market.-Royal Museum.-Antiquities.-Coins found in Sardinia.-Phnician Remains.-The Sarde Idols._

The high road between Sa.s.sari and Cagliari, called the _Strada Reale_, runs through the great level of the Campidano for a distance of 140 miles, and as there is a daily communication between the two cities by the well-appointed _diligences_ already mentioned, the journey, unlike others in Sardinia, is performed with comfort and rapidity. But, whatever he may gain by the exchange, the traveller will hardly bid adieu to the mountains and forest-paths of the Gallura and Barbagia without regret.

About half way, stands Oristano, an old city, of some 6000 inhabitants, with some of the Spanish character of Alghero. Though fallen from its former importance, the place is still wealthy, and, in some degree, commercial. It is, however, deserted in the summer and autumn, when the atmosphere becomes so pestilential from the inhalations of the neighbouring stagna and lagunes as to justify the proverb:-

A Oristano che ghe vu, In Oristano ghe resta!

The most striking object in the place is the belfry of the cathedral, a detached octangular tower, roofed with a pear-shaped dome, of coloured tiles, and commanding from the summit a fine view of the plains from the sea to the distant mountains. The orange groves of Milis, a village lying a little out of the high road to Oristano, are worth a visit. The trees are considered the finest in Europe. I have never seen orange trees that will bear comparison with them in any part of the world, except on some of the Dutch farms in the Cape colony, where they are still more magnificent; vying in size with the European oaks, planted, probably at the same time, by the German settlers from the Black Forest, the disbanded soldiers of the States of Holland, to whom many of the African Boers owe their origin. Such orange groves, when loaded with blossoms and fruit, glowing in the shade of their dense ma.s.ses of glossy deep-green foliage, are perhaps the most charming of vegetable productions. No idea of their richness and beauty can be formed from the dwarf, round-topped trees, one sees in most orange districts. Here, as in South Africa, they owe their luxuriance to abundant irrigation. Some of the trees at Milis are from thirty-five to forty feet high, and there are said to be 300,000 of them of full growth. The annual produce is estimated at from fifty to sixty millions of fruit, and, being in great repute for their quality, they are conveyed to Sa.s.sari and Cagliari, and all parts of the island, the price varying from 1-1/2_d._ to 4-3/4_d._ per dozen, according to circ.u.mstances.

Cagliari, the capital of Sardinia, a city containing upwards of 35,000 inhabitants, is seen to most advantage when approached from the sea, the campagna in the vicinity being neither fertile nor picturesque. Standing at the head of a n.o.ble bay or gulf, twenty-four miles in depth and twelve across, with good anchorage everywhere, its advantageous position pointed out Cagliari as a seat of commerce from the earliest times. The Phnicians, the Greeks, and Carthaginians were attracted by the fine harbour, and the inducements offered by the neighbouring heights for the construction of a fortified town. The Romans made it the chief seat of their rule in the island. The port, called the Da.r.s.ena, is capable of containing more than all the s.h.i.+pping at present frequenting it, with such a depth of water that, while I was at Cagliari, one of the largest steams.h.i.+ps in the royal Sardinian navy lay alongside the quay.

In the view from the gulf, the eye first rests on the upper town, surrounded with walls and towers, and crowning the summit of a hill upwards of 400 feet above the level of the sea. At the base of the heights lie the suburbs of the Marina, Stampace, and Villanova, the former occupying the s.p.a.ce between the Castello, or Casteddu, as the whole circuit of the fortified town is called, and the port; and, with the two other suburbs, on the east and west of the Marina, forming one long continuous line of irregular buildings. In our _tableau_, the Casteddu towers proudly over the lower town, which has grown up beneath it since the Middle Ages. It still retains its original importance, containing all the princ.i.p.al public buildings, and being the residence of the government officials, and, in short, the aristocratic quarter.

The best houses in the Marina are occupied by the foreign consuls and persons engaged in commerce, so that there is a marked distinction between the upper and lower parts of the city.

Besides a strong citadel, there are, in the circuit of the fortifications three ma.s.sive towers, called the Elephant, the Lion, and the Eagle, built by the Pisans; and the Castello is entered by four arched and embattled gateways. One of these was in the act of being demolished during my recent visit to Cagliari, in order to afford freer communication between the upper town and the Marina. Its removal seemed emblematic of an improving state of society, tending to level the barriers of caste, and engage the rising generation of the privileged orders in pursuits calculated as much for their own benefit as the development of the resources with which Sardinia abounds.

Easy access to the Casteddu is gained by a circuitous avenue cut on the sloping side of the hill and under the escarped heights. Being planted with trees, it forms a pleasant walk, commanding extensive views of the Campidano, the distant mountains, and the Gulf of Cagliari. The direct ascent from the Marina is steep and toilsome, it being gained by a series of narrow avenues and flights of steps, landing in streets running parallel with that side of the Castello. These also are narrow as well as lofty, like those of most fortified places in the south of Europe. Here we find the best shops; and the thoroughfares have a busy appearance, except in the heat of the day, when most of the inhabitants indulge in the _siesta_.

The cathedral, standing in the heart of the Castello, was built by the Pisans with part of the remains of a basilica founded by Constantine. It is on a grand scale, having three naves, and a presbytery ascended by several ranges of steps. The church is embellished with fine marbles, and the ornaments being rich, with some good pictures and grand monuments, the effect, on the whole, is striking. A crypt hewn out of the solid rock, under the presbytery, is regarded with great reverence by the Sardes, as containing the supposed remains of two hundred martyrs removed there from the church of St. Saturninus, in 1617.

Among the fifty-two churches in the Castello and the suburbs, I will only mention that of St. Augustine, attached to which is the oratory built by himself during a short visit to the island. A story is told of one of the beams for the roof proving too short; upon which the saint, quoting to the workmen the text declaring that to those who have faith all things are possible, ordered them to pull at one end while he took the other, when, scarcely touching it, the beam stretched to the required length. St. Augustine's remains were transported here in 505, from Hippo-Regius, where he died, by the Catholic bishops exiled from Africa by Thrasamond, king of the Vandals.[94] The Chronicles inform us that these bishops, two hundred and twenty in number, were sustained by the benevolence of Pope Symmachus, a native of Sardinia, who sent them every year money and clothes. St. Augustine's relics remained at Cagliari till 722, when Luitprand, king of the Lombards, in consequence of the danger to which they were constantly exposed by the invasions of the Saracens, obtained them from the Cagliarese, and carrying them to Pavia deposited them in the duomo of that city, where they rested, till in 1842, these were restored to Hippo by the French.[95]

The church of the Jesuits, at Cagliari, is described as distinguished among the others for the sumptuousness of its style, and its decorations of coloured marbles and columns. It was closed, with the adjoining college, at the time of my visit. The Jesuits formerly possessed large estates, and had colleges in several of the princ.i.p.al towns of the island. The whole were suppressed long ago; but in 1823, the late king, Carlo Felice, partially restored and re-endowed the order, some of the monks being re-established in the college of Cagliari. Of late years, there seems to have been a considerable reaction in the temper of the Sardes as regards religion, at least, in the towns. No people were more bigoted, more priest-ridden, more credulous of the absurdest superst.i.tions. But in a conversation I recently had on the subject with a very intelligent and well-informed friend in the island, he a.s.sured me that the utmost laxity now prevails in the religious sentiments of the people. They have lost all respect for the clergy, calling them _bottegaie_, shopkeepers, as mindful only of the gains of their trade; and the churches _bottege_, shops. There is no vitality in the religion of the people, the services are a mere mummery, and the system is held together princ.i.p.ally by the attractions of the popular _festas_, such as those described in a former chapter as scenes of baccha.n.a.lian revelry tricked out in the paraphernalia of religion. As for the Jesuits, the most obnoxious of the ecclesiastics, my friend stated, that the populace of Cagliari "burnt them out," intending, I apprehend, to convey that they were violently expelled.

In earlier visits to the Continent, and reflecting on the subject at home, the question had often occurred whether, with advancing intelligence, and growing aspirations for civil and religious liberty, the people of Catholic countries might not be drawn, in the course of events, to a movement similar to that of our own Reformation of the Church in the 16th century; the ruling powers, as then, taking the lead, and emanc.i.p.ating their States from the papal yoke. Thus, while abuses and gross doctrinal errors were reformed, the exterior frame of the establishment, its hierarchy, ceremonial, privileges and property would remain intact; the whole system being so arranged as to be brought into harmony with the action of government, and to meet the demands of an enlightened age. Why should there not be more reformed national and independent churches?

In this view, when conversing with foreigners of intelligence, I have often pointed out the distinction between the Anglican Church and the "Evangelical" and other Protestant communities abroad. Such a reform would seem to be well suited to answer the wants of the kingdom of Sardinia in the present state of her relations with the Court of Rome.

It would consolidate the fabric of the const.i.tutional government; and we may conceive that the cabinet of Turin, and perhaps the king, are enlightened enough to be sensible of its advantages.

But it may well be doubted whether the ma.s.ses of the population, in either that or any other Catholic country, are ripe for such a revolution. In this age of reason, the dogmas which formed the war-cries of Luther and Calvin have lost their influence on the minds of men, and, except in some sections of the various religious communities, a general apathy on doctrinal subjects has succeeded the excitement with which the Reformation was ushered in. The tendency of the present age is in the direction of more sweeping reforms, and when the time comes, as no thoughtful man can doubt it will with growing intelligence, for the people of Europe to cast off the shackles of superst.i.tion and bigotry, it may be feared that things of more serious account than ecclesiastical systems and inst.i.tutions may be swept away by the overwhelming tide so long pent up.

Meanwhile, there appears little probability of any great change. The territorial distinctions between Catholic and Protestant States remain much the same as when they were shaped out in the time of the Reformation, and the wars succeeding it. Each party holds its own; and there is little probability of a national secession from the Church of Rome, even in the Sardinian dominions, where many circ.u.mstances concur to point out its expediency, and even its possibility. Among others, it will not be forgotten, that the standard of Protestantism was raised in the valleys of Savoy, ages before it floated triumphantly in the north of Europe.

In 1841 there were 91 monasteries in Sardinia, containing 1093 regular monks, besides lay brothers, &c., and 16 convents with 260 nuns; the whole number of persons attached to these inst.i.tutions being calculated at 8000. There are about the same number of secular clergy, including the bishops, dignitaries, and cathedral chapters, with the parochial clergy, the island being divided into 393 parishes. The population of Sardinia, by the last returns I was able to procure[96], was 541,907 in 1850; so that one-ninth were ecclesiastics of one description or another. It should be stated, however, that most, if not all, the monasteries and convents have been lately suppressed, and the religious pensioned off, so that the system is dying out.

The revenues of the bishops' sees, and the cathedral and parochial clergy, were calculated in 1841 at about 66,000_l._, arising from church lands, besides the t.i.thes, estimated at 1,500,000 lire nove, or 60,000_l._, supposed to be a low estimate, the t.i.thes being worth one million of lire more. These revenues are exclusive of voluntary contributions, alms, offerings, and collections. The church lands contributed upwards of 3000_l._ annually as state subsidies, for the national debt, the maintaining roads and bridges, and the conveyance of the post. Mr. Tyndale estimates "the revenue of the see of Cagliari at from 60,000 to 80,000 scudi,-from 11,520_l._ to 15,360_l._ per annum; while that of the priests is about 1000 scudi, or 192_l._" This gives some idea of the incomes of the Sardinian clergy. I imagine that the government has not interfered with any part of the ecclesiastical revenues, except those attached to the monasteries.

The fruit and vegetable markets of large foreign towns must always be attractive to a traveller, especially in the South and East, where the fruit, in great varieties, is so abundant, and he meets with vegetables unknown in the gardens and cookery of his own country. Not only so, but the dresses, and even the gestures and manners, of the country people, to say nothing of the dealings of the buyers, form a never-failing source of interest and amus.e.m.e.nt; while an additional zest is lent in a warm climate, by the freshness of the early hour at which the visit must be paid to be really enjoyed. The market at Cagliari is held in the suburb of Stampace, and approached by one of those avenues shaded with exotic trees, which make such agreeable promenades in the neighbourhood of the city. The princ.i.p.al supply comes from Pula, Arabus, and other villages at considerable distances from Cagliari; the soil in the vicinity being too arid to be productive. The supply appeared abundant, and of excellent quality. Among the fruits,-it was in the early part of September,-I noted grapes, figs, pears, oranges, lemons, citrons, peaches, melons, and p.r.i.c.kly pears. Among the vegetables, the heaps of tomatas, chilis, and other condiments were surprising, and there were gigantic "_torzi_," a kind of turnip-cabbage, and other varieties, whose names have escaped my memory.

My visit to the Royal Museum was also paid at an early hour, through the kindness of Signor Cara, the Curator, who was so obliging as to show me also his cabinet of antiques at his private residence,-rich in cameos, intaglios, and scarabei of rare beauty. The Royal Museum occupies a suite of small apartments in the University. The collection owes great part of its objects of interest, and their good order and arrangement, to the indefatigable zeal and disinterested devotion of Signor Cara, whose appointments, and the allowance for purchasing objects, are not unworthy of a liberal government.

The collection of Roman antiquities occupying the entrance-wall is very meagre, considering the many stations established in the island during the republic and empire. Besides two colossal consular statues, having an air of dignity, and with the toga well chiselled, there was little to observe but some Roman milestones, sarcophagi, and fragments of various kinds.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SARDO-ROMAN COIN.]

The coins of the Roman period are numerous, but most of them of little value. One here figured is, however, unique; being, I imagine, the only coin known to have been struck in the island. Atius Balbus, whose name and bust appear on the face[97], was grandfather of the Emperor Augustus, and prefect of Sardinia about sixty years before Christ. The reverse represents a head wearing a singular cap, crowned by an ostrich plume; with a sceptre, and the words "Sardus Pater," who is supposed to be the founder of Nora, the first town built in Sardinia, and of Libyan and Phnician origin.[98]

[Ill.u.s.tration: CARTHAGINIAN COIN.]

The cabinet also contains about 100 coins of the Carthaginian period.

Many such are found in the island, but, as may be supposed, not in numbers equal to those which attest the long duration of the Roman power. While Captain Smyth was engaged in his survey of the coast, a farmer in the island of St. Pietro, successively a Greek, Carthaginian, and Roman station, pa.s.sed his ploughshare over an amphora of Carthaginian bra.s.s coins, of which Captain Smyth purchased about 250.

"They were," he states, "with two exceptions, of the usual type: obverse, the head of Ceres; and reverse, a horse or palm-tree, or both."

Some presented to me by Carlo Rugiu, one of which is here figured, have a horse's head on one face, and the palm-tree with fruit, probably dates, on the other.

There are specimens in the British Museum, but not so good as those given me by Signor Rugiu. The coins in the possession of Captain Smyth appear to have represented the horse in full detail, as he mentions the peculiarity of their having a Punic character between the horse's legs, differing in every one. It need hardly be observed how appropriate, on an African coin, were such devices as the date-palm of the desert, and the horse, emblematic of its fiery cavalry.