There is also a series of three pensile lamps—two in the likeness of the head and neck of a griffin, and the third in that of a theatrical mask; as well as a candelabrum fourteen inches high, terminating beneath in three legs with lions' claws (foreshadowing or repeating oriental motives), and above in a two-handled vessel on which to place the lamp. This vessel supports at present a fine lucerna in the form of a peacock.

Probably no people in the world have kept extant, or rather, kept alive, their oldest forms of pottery or instruments for giving light more steadfastly or more solicitously than the Spaniards. Their iron candil[88] and brass velón of nowadays (Pls. [xxviii]. and [xxix].)—the one of these the primitive lamp that hangs; the other, the primitive lamp that rests upon a table or the ground—are borrowed with but a minimum of alteration from the lighting apparatus of the ancient Greeks and Romans, and possess, for all their coarse and cheap and unpretentious workmanship, a subtle interest and elegance attributable only to the inspiration of antiquity.

A VELÓN
(Modern)

More than the shape of these old objects seems to have passed to modern Spain—if any phase at all of Spanish life can ever justly be accounted modern. The ancients had an almost superstitious reverence for a lighted lamp, and were accustomed to declare that “lucerna, cum extinguitur, vocem emittit, quasi necata”; “a lamp, on being put out, utters a sound as though it were being murdered.” Now, it may be a coincidence—although I cannot but regard it as distinctly more than a coincidence—that even at this day a large proportion of the Andalusian people are markedly averse to blowing out a kindled match; nor do they think it of good augury to be in a room where three lights—candles, matches, or whatever they may be—are simultaneously aflame. I have noticed, too, that, whether from utter carelessness or whether from ancestral superstition handed down from Rome, one rarely sees upon the staircase or the doorstep of a Spanish public building a vesta that has been (if I may be allowed the term) extinguished artificially.[89]

In the Madrid Museum are several military bronze signa which were found in Spain and date from the Roman era, as well as a vexillum, or one of the T-shaped frames on which the warriors of that people used to hang their standards. One of these signa is in the form of a wild boar; another in that of a saddled and bridled horse. Beneath this latter is the word VIVA and a cross, which shows that the object dates from a period not earlier than the reign of Constantine.

It is strange—or rather, would be strange in any country that had been less constantly afflicted both with civil and external warfare—that hardly anything remains of all the bronze artistic objects manufactured by the Spanish Moors. Poets of this race have sung of gold and silver fountains, door-knockers, and statues that adorned the buildings of Cordova. In many of these instances the hyperbolic gold and silver of the writers would undoubtedly be bronze. Al-Makkari quotes an Arab poet who extols in passionate terms Almanzor's dazzling mansion of Az-zahyra. “Lions of metal,” sang this poet, “bite the knockers of thy doors, and as those doors resound appear to be exclaiming Allahu akbar” (“God is great”). Another bard describes the fountains of the same enchanted palace. “The lions who repose majestically in this home of princes, instead of roaring, allow the waters to fall in murmuring music from their mouths. Their bodies seem to be covered with gold, and in their mouths crystal is made liquid.

“Though in reality these lions are at rest, they seem to move and, when provoked, to grow enraged. One would imagine that they remembered their carnage of past days, and bellowing turned once more to the attack.