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Result of the Evidence.

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They leave the material to speak for itself. In Etruria apparently they did otherwise, and in this, as in other instances, the artist has, in Dr. Corssen's opinion, recorded his own age, and informed the family of the dead man that at the time of doing this work he was three-score and ten years old.*

Nothing is more certain than that if these words on the coffin-lid had run arils machs mealchls lupu, instead of arils LXX lupu, Dr. Corssen would have declared that this was one of the sepulchres fashioned by the sculptor Avilius Magus. As the Roman numerals forbid his doing this, he has to seek the artist's name elsewhere, and in this instance Svalasi comes out as one of the illustrious confraternity of which the Avilii were the most prominent and successful members. Twelve of these great artists, six bearing only the name Avils, the others being styled respectively Avils Machs, Avils Sesths, Thanchvilu Avils, and Avils Esals, have left their works scattered broadcast over the land. Whatever may

have been their powers as artists, their social dignity, if Dr. Corssen's account of them be true, cannot be questioned. Some of them belonged to families which could boast of furnishing Lucumones to the Etruscan confederacy; † but of the Avils, a more wonderful characteristic is that they seem never to have died. Their earliest and latest works are separated by an interval of many centuries; yet no epitaph records the death of any of this long-lived race, nor have we proof that any of them were buried in any Etruscan cemeteries.

We have patiently gone thus far through this farrago of prodigious absurdity and impossible nonsense, nor can we see that we are in any way bound to go further, or that we can gain anything by so doing. Dr. Corssen has attempted to prove that Etruscan is an Italic dialect, and his efforts to deal with mere epitaphs-the inscriptions in which above all others we should look for a frequent use of numerals-have had no other result than to heap together a mass of unlikely and extravagant statements, which nothing less than an authority proved to be infallible could induce us to accept.

Dann fügte er auf dem Deckel noch die Anmerkung hinzu, dass er, der Bildhauer, siebenzig Jahr alt sei.--Page 647.

+ Corssen, pp. 680, 730.

No such authority exists, or can exist; and in its absence we cannot resist the conclusion that Dr. Corssen's theory of the Italic origin of Etruscan is a complete failure. It is possible, we believe barely possible, that Mr. Taylor's hypothesis may be wrong: it is more than possible that some, or many of his analogies, may be groundless. But his method assigns to the long series of epitaphs just the meanings which we should suppose that they would have; it has brought out a perfectly consistent system of numeration; and it leads to conclusions which are in complete accordance with all that we know about the people, their history, their religion, and their laws. In all these respects Dr. Corssen's method fails ludicrously, and for unprejudiced thinkers there is only this satisfaction, that all that could be done for the Italic theory he has done. The origin of the Etruscan language may still remain possibly an insoluble enigma; but the fact is established that it is neither an Italic nor an Aryan dialect.

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We had intended to examine the chief Etruscan words which denote kinship, and some of the names borne by Etruscan deities or other mythical personages, but space fails us; nor is there any imperative need of continuing an inquiry which will only bring out still more and more the arbitrary and groundless fancies of Dr. Corssen. One instance only may be given. The word sech is of frequent occurrence on the coffins of women. Mr. Taylor, referring to the old Scythic of the Behistun inscription, compares it with the word sacho-hut,' we ' are descended,' with the cuneiform Susian sak, a son,' with the existing Lapp sakko, offspring,' the Tungus a-satk-an, 'daughter,' and the Mongol ba-sag-an, 'a maiden.' To prove the Italic character of the word, Dr. Corssen is compelled to travel, strange to say, beyond Latin or even Greek, where he finds nothing to help him, to the Sanskrit saktis, ' union,' and the Church Slavonic po-sagu, 'marriage.' With him therefore sech denotes legitimacy of birth, and as such is translated 'connubio nata,' the word for daughter being harthna or farthana. It is enough to ask what nation has ever proclaimed legitimacy on tombs, and why among the Etruscans, if it had this meaning, it should occur only on the tombs of daughters? Why again should each of these two terms for daughter be found only once, while the word for 'legitimate' should be used

Meaning of Farthana.

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forty-four times? Ugric analogies would seem to show that the word farthana means a cinerary urn, and at the least this meaning perfectly suits the inscriptions in which it occurs. To examine Dr. Corssen's remarks on the metronymic suffix al, would be only to go again into a tangle as wild as that with which he has surrounded the question of Etruscan epitaphs.*

ART. V.-The Boarding Out of Pauper Orphans.

(1.) The Report of the Local Government Board, 1873–74.
(2.) The Children of the State. By Miss FLORENCE HILL.
(3.) Observations on the Report of Mrs. Senior to the Local
Government Board. By E. C. TUFNELL

THE question of the best way to make volunteer work fit in with the work of officials is one that seems to press itself more and more on the attention of philanthropists and reformers, and especially to affect all movements relating to the relief of the poor.

No more interesting phase of this question has yet appeared than that which has been called into prominence by the contest between Mr. Tufnell and Mrs. Nassau Senior on the respective merits of district schools and cottage homes as means of training pauper orphans.

Into the personal part of this controversy we do not propose to enter; but we shall endeavour as much as possible to place before our readers the conflicting evidence with regard to the public aspects of the question of boarding-out, and to show from that evidence our reasons for believing that Mrs. Senior has a strong case for her proposed reforms.

We shall examine first of all her criticisms on the present system, and the objections made to these criticisms by Mr. Tufnell. We shall then endeavour to explain exactly what * This article was already in type before the writer became aware of the fact that Herr Deecke, in his tract, Corssen und die Sprache der Etrusker' (Stuttgart, 1875), had reached substantially the same conclusions. He has not yet seen Herr Deecke's review: the agreement between the two papers must therefore carry with it whatever weight may belong to similarity of results obtained by independent thought.

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the scheme is which she defends and desires to see extended; and, finally, we shall consider the objections made to that scheme by Mr. Tufnell and other inspectors.

At the same time we are bound to call attention to the fact, which has been sometimes rather ignored, that Mrs. Senior's Report is not a report in favour of substituting boarding out for district schools, but in favour of reorganising the present schools in certain particulars and applying the principle of boarding out to the exceptional cases of orphans.

The average English public-school man, however much he may be attached to the school in which he was brought up, however much even he may hold that the good he learnt from it far outweighed the evil, must yet admit that his comparatively free intercourse with other boys of a different standard of morality from his own did introduce him to forms of evil of which he would have had a greater horror in after life if he had not been made so early acquainted with them.

Let such a man then imagine a school much more miscellaneous in tone than his own, without any traditions of selfrespect or school honour; the belonging to which, so far from being a matter that he can look back upon with pride in after life, is a subject to be avoided with shame; in which no genuine development of out-of-door life and of habits of self dependence is known. He will then readily understand the kind of institution which Mrs. Nassau Senior criticises in the Report which is the chief subject of this article.

With regard indeed to one of the evils here mentioned-the degradation of the connection with the workhouse-there has, no doubt, been a change for the better in the metropolitan schools since they were removed from within the workhouse walls. On this point Mr. Tufnell's evidence is very strong, and this evidence is further confirmed by Miss Florence Hill's account of the starting of the Limehouse schools.*

Yet from Mrs. Senior's Report we gather that the influences of the workhouse are still able to affect the children even under the present improved system.

The evils which are treated of in this Report may be divided

*Children of the State,' p. 55.

'Permanents and Casuals.'

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into three classes: (1) Those which arise from the miscellaneous character of the children in the schools. (2) From the training in and government of those schools. (3) From the still remaining connection with the workhouse.

The first class of evils seems chiefly to arise from the association of the children who are permanently confined to the workhouse, in consequence of being orphans or deserted, with those who go in and out with their parents, often many times a year. This latter class are naturally less under the control of the workhouse authorities, and the parents who take them out are generally of the most reckless and depraved character, and can have only an evil influence on them.

The effect of their companionship on their schoolfellows is most strikingly illustrated by one instance quoted by Mrs. Senior.

'Among many officers who regretted the present system of mixing the two classes of children I found one who spoke even more strongly than the rest, and whose opinion I consider of great value. She fully recog nised the large amount of mischief that can be done in a school by one child, and felt that the least important duty of a mistress is the supervision of children during school hours. She devotes herself to being with the girls in the playground as well as in the schoolroom, in the hope of putting a stop, by her presence, to any corrupting talk. She told me that the horrors that some children, coming from low homes, talked could hardly be imagined, things of which she had no idea till she learnt them from the children. She was most strongly in favour of separating the two classes of permanents and casuals, if by any plan it could be made possible, and from her long experience and remarkable devotion to duty I attach special value to her opinion.' (P. 316.)

To the accuracy of this picture, however, two objections are made by Mr. Tufnell. In the first place he quotes a report from the chaplain of the North Surrey District School, showing that in that school great improvement was made in the moral character of the children in the course of two years. (Tufnell, p. 2.)

Mr. Tufnell's other objection is that the separating of the casual class from the permanents would not directly facilitate the carrying out of Mrs. Senior's scheme, because the orphans are as bad as those who are still liable to be withdrawn by their parents.

Now to consider this last objection first. Mrs. Senior would

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