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.
Pisa was a republic in the middle ages, with a government of her own, armies and navies of her own and a great commerce.

She was a warlike power, and inscribed upon her banners many a brilliant fight with Genoese and Turks.