Should a vestal maiden allow the sacred fire to become extinguished, she was beaten by the Grand Pontiff till her blood flowed, and the new fire was solemnly rekindled by rubbing together dry wood, or by focussing the sun’s rays. It might not be borrowed from a strange place. The circular form and domed roof of the Temples of Vesta were survivals of the prehistoric huts of the aborigines. Among the legends of the early Celtic saints nothing is more common than the story of the saint being sent to borrow fire, and carrying it in his lap without the fire injuring his garment. In Ireland, before St. Patrick introduced Christianity, there was a temple at Tara where fire burned ever, and was on no account suffered to go out. When Christianity became dominant, it was necessary to dissociate the ideas of the people from the central fire as mixed up with the old gods; at the same time some central fire was an absolute need. Accordingly the Church was converted into the sacred depository of the perpetual fire, and a lamp was kept in it ever burning, not only that the candles might be ignited from it for the services, without recourse had to friction or tinder flint and steel, but also that the parish, the village, the town, might obtain thence their fire. [Illustration: _Fig. 30._--CRESSET-STONE, ST. AMBROGIO, MILAN.] [Illustration: _Fig. 31._--CRESSET-STONE, LEWANNICK.] There exist still a few--a very few--contrivances for this perpetual fire in our churches; they go by the name of cresset-stones. The earliest I know is not in England, but is in the atrium outside the remarkable church of St. Ambrogio at Milan. It is a block of white marble on a moulded base, it is now broken, but banded together with iron. It stands 3 feet 10 inches high, and is 2 feet 6 inches in diameter at top. It consists of a flat surface in which are depressed nine cuplike hollows. These were originally filled with oil, and wicks were placed in them and ignited. In England one is still _in situ_, in the church of Lewannick, in Cornwall. There it is not far from the door. It consists of a circular block containing on its flat upper surface, which is twenty-two inches across, seven cuplike hollows, four and a half inches deep. The stone stands on a rudely moulded base, octagonal, and is in all about 2 feet 6 inches high. In Furness Abbey, among the ruins, has been found another, with five cups in it; at Calder Abbey another, with sixteen such cups for oil and wicks. At York is another with six such fire-cups, and at Stockholm another with the same number, in a square stone table. At Wool Church, Dorset, is again another example built into the south wall of a small chapel on the north side of the chancel. It is a block of Purbeck marble, and has in the top five cup-shaped cavities quite blackened with the oil and smoke. In some of the examples there are traces of a metal pin around which the wick was twisted.