122, whereon the Nineveh lions come forth so conspicuously. As a good example of well-wrought “diaspron” or diaper, No. 8233, p. 154, may be mentioned, along with No. 7052, p. 127. [224] Genesis ii. 9. _Saracenic_ weaving, as shown by the design upon the web, is exemplified in several specimens before us. However much against what looks like a heedlessness of the Koran’s teachings, certain it is that the Saracens, those of the upper classes in particular, felt no difficulty in wearing robes upon which animals and the likenesses of other created things were woven; with the strictest of their princes, a double-headed eagle was a royal heraldic device, as we have shown, p. lxiii. Stuffs, then, figured with birds and beasts, with trees and flowers, were not the less of Saracenic workmanship, and meant for Moslem wear. What, however, may be looked for upon real Saracenic textures is a pattern consisting of longitudinal stripes of blue, red, green, and other colour; some of them charged with animals, small in form, other some written, in large Arabic letters, with a word or sentence, often a proverb, often a good wish or some wise saw. As examples we would point to No. 8288, p. 178, and 7051, p. 127. For a fair specimen of diapering, No. 7050, p. 127, while No. 8639, p. 243, presents us with a design having in it, besides the crescent moon, a proof that architectural forms were not forgotten by the weaver-draughtsman, in his sketches for the loom. Later, in our chapter on Tapestry, we shall have occasion to speak about another sort of Saracenic work or tapestry, of the kind called abroad, from the position of its frame, of the basse lisse. _Moresco-Spanish_, or Saracenic textiles, wrought in Spain, though partaking of the striped pattern, and bearing words in real or imitated Arabic, had some distinctions of their own. The designs shown upon these stuffs are almost always drawn out of strap-work, reticulations, or some combination or another of geometrical lines, amid which are occasionally to be found different forms of conventional flowers. Specimens are to be seen here at pp. 51, 55, 121, 124, 125, 186, 240, &c. Sometimes, but very rarely, the crescent moon is figured as in the curious piece, No. 8639, p. 243. The colours of these silks are usually either a fine crimson, or a deep blue with almost always a fine toned yellow as a ground. But one remarkable feature in these Moresco-Spanish textiles is the presence, when gold is brought in, of an ingenious though fraudulent imitation of the precious metal, for which shreds of gilded parchment cut up into narrow flat strips are substituted, and woven with the silk. This, when fresh, must have looked very bright, and have given the web all the appearance of those favourite stuffs called here in England “tissues,” of which we have already spoken, p. xxiii.