[88] "A small open lamp with a beak, and a hook to hang it, within which is another of the same make that contains oil and a wick to give light, commonly used in kitchens, stables, and inns."--Fathers Connelly and Higgins, _Spanish-English and English-Spanish Dictionary_. Swinburne wrote of these _candiles_:--"The Spaniards delight in wine that tastes strong of the pitched skin, and of oil that has a rank smell and taste; indeed, the same oil feeds their lamp, swims in their pottage, and dresses their salad; in inns the lighted lamp is frequently handed down to the table, that each man may take the quantity he chooses." [Illustration: XXIX 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] [89] Perhaps it is not foreign to my theme to add that the current name in Spanish for an oil lamp is _quinqué_, from Quinquet, the Parisian chemist who invented the _tuyau-cheminée_ a hundred and odd years ago. The same word passes also into Spanish slang, "_tener quinqué_"--_i.e._ to be quick-witted and perceptive. 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.