house at your disposal. Five Moorish keys--one of bronze and four of iron--are in the Museum of Segovia, and bear, as Amador observes, a general resemblance to the iron key of Seville. The wards of four of them are shaped into the following inscriptions: the first key, "_In Secovia_ (Segovia)"; the second, "(_This_) _key was curiously wrought at Medina Huelma, God protect her_"; the third, "_Open_"; and the fourth, "_This work is by Abdallah._" The first and smallest of these keys informs us, therefore, that it was manufactured at Segovia. The third key is that which is of bronze, and bears the word "_Open_," probably addressed to Allah. The second, which is also the largest and the most artistic and ornate, belonged, we read upon its wards, to Huelma, a fortress-town upon the frontiers of the kingdom of Granada. This town was wrested from the Moors on April 20th, 1438, by Iñigo Lopez de Mendoza, first Marquis of Santillana, who possibly sent this key to Castile as a present to his sovereign, Juan the Second, in company with the usual papers of capitulation. Other Moorish keys are scattered over Spain in various of her public and private collections, though none are so remarkable as those of Seville and Segovia. The town of Sepúlveda possesses seven early iron keys, several of which are Moorish. Others are at Burgos, Valencia, Palma, Jaen, and Granada. At the last-named city the following key, dating undoubtedly from the period of the Muslim domination, was discovered, in 1901, among the débris of the Palace of Seti Meriem.[63] [63] _La Alhambra_ (from which this sketch is taken) for September 30th, 1901; article on the Palace of Seti Meriem, by F. de Paula Valladar. [Illustration] Keys of awe-inspiring magnitude are still preferred among the Spaniards to a handier and slighter instrument, this people seeming to believe that the bigger the key the more inviolable is the custody which it affords--a theory not at all upheld by modern experts in this venerable craft. Perhaps this singular and local preference is derived from Barbary. At any rate it still obtains across the Strait. "Our host," wrote Mr Cunninghame Graham in _Mogreb-El-Acksa_, "knocks off great pieces from a loaf of cheap French sugar with the key of the house, drawing it from his belt and hammering lustily, as the key weighs about four ounces, and is eight or nine inches long." Of such a length are nearly all the house-keys of contemporary Spain; and with this apparatus bulging in his belt the somnolent _sereno_ or night-watchman of this sleepy, unprogressive, Latino-Mussulmanic land prowls to this hour along the starlit streets of Barcelona, Seville, or Madrid.