We were bound for the University, having but made a détour in our drive thither, to see what the guide-books catalogued as the “most singular structures in Bologna”—the drunken towers.
The buildings occupied by the famous school of learning are comparatively modern, and were, until 1803, the palace of the Cellesi, a noble family of Bologna. The library of one hundred thousand volumes is arranged in an extensive suite of rooms, frescoed, as are some of the corridors, with the coats of arms of former students in the University.
“What if a student should not have a family escutcheon?” we suggested to our guide.
The objection was as intelligible, we saw, at once, as if we had asked, “Must every student have a head of his own in order to matriculate here?”
While we speculated in our own vernacular as to the number of genuine heraldic emblems four or five hundred American college-boys could collect at such a demand from their Alma Mater, and the guide stood by, puzzled and obsequious, we were accosted in excellent English by a gentleman who had entered from another room.
“Can I be of service to you? We are proud of our University and happy to show it to strangers.”
It was Sig. Giovanni Szedilo, of whose grammar of Egyptian hieroglyphics we afterward heard much, and for the next three hours, he acted as host and interpreter.
The Bolognese Street of Tombs has been uncovered within a decade. It was disclosed by that searcher of depths and bringer of hidden things to light—a railway cutting. The bared sepulchres gave up wonderful treasures, and the ancient University, as next of age in the region, became their keeper. In one room of the museum are large glass cases fastened to the floor, by brickwork, I think. In these lay the exhumed Etruscan skeletons amid their native dust. The removal of the graves with their tenants was so skillfully effected that we saw them exactly as they had lain in the ground. Sons of Anak all—and daughters as well. The women were six feet in length and grandly proportioned. Tarnished bracelets, from which the gems had dropped, encircled the fleshless wrists, and a tiara had slipped from the brow of one with the gentle mouldering back to ashes. “Can a maid forget her ornaments?” The Etruscans believed that she would not be content in the next world—wherever they located it—without them. In the hand of each person lay the small coin that was to pay the Etruscan Charon for the soul’s passage over the dark river. Always a river to Pagan and to Christian, and too deep for man’s fording! Beside the skeleton of a little girl was a tray set out with a doll’s tea-set, as we would call it, pretty little vessels of Etruscan ware, that were a dainty prize of themselves, in a “collector’s” eyes. We would not have touched them had they been exposed to manual examination—although the craze for antique pottery had possessed us for many years. The outstretching of the small arm, the pointing fingers in the direction of the plaything were a sufficient guard. Other toys were laid away with other children; now and then, a vase, or a cup of choicer ware, beside an adult.
“Supposed to be two thousand years old!” said our erudite guide. “We are assisted materially in our computation of dates by the articles buried with them.”
A running lecture upon Etruscan pottery ensued, illustrated by the large and perfectly-assorted collection in the museum. There were five different and well-defined periods in the history of the art, we learned, and how to discern the features of each. We marked its rise and decline from the earthenware pot, roughly engraved and rudely colored, and the dark, or black jug, with slightly raised and more graceful designs upon a smooth surface—to the elegant forms of chalice and vase, embellished with groups of allegorical figures, and painted tales of love and war. These declined in beauty and finish until, about fifty years before the Christian era, all traces of the renowned manufacture were lost.