from as remote an epoch as possible, the gradual progress of
civilization to more perfect forms, and the suppression of races
less capable of, or less advanced in, culture by nations of higher
standing.

Italy is singularly poor in memorials of the primitive period, and
presents in this respect a remarkable contrast to other fields of
civilization. The results of German archaeological research lead
to the conclusion that in England, France, the North of Germany
and Scandinavia, before the settlement of the Indo-Germans in those
lands, there must have dwelt, or rather roamed, a people, perhaps
of Mongolian race, gaining their subsistence by hunting and fishing,
making their implements of stone, clay, or bones, adorning themselves
with the teeth of animals and with amber, but unacquainted with
agriculture and the use of the metals. In India, in like manner, the
Indo-Germanic settlers were preceded by a dark-coloured population
less susceptible of culture. But in Italy we neither meet with
fragments of a supplanted nation, such as the Finns and Lapps in the
Celto-Germanic domain and the black tribes in the Indian mountains;
nor have any remains of an extinct primitive people been hitherto
pointed out there, such as appear to be revealed in the peculiarly-formed
skeletons, the places of assembling, and the burial mounds of what
is called the stone-period of Germanic antiquity. Nothing has
hitherto been brought to light to warrant the supposition that
mankind existed in Italy at a period anterior to the knowledge of
agriculture and of the smelting of the metals; and if the human
race ever within the bounds of Italy really occupied the level of
that primitive stage of culture which we are accustomed to call
the savage state, every trace of such a fact has disappeared.