Other remarkable _aleros_ are in the Generalife and in the Court of Lions of the Alhambra, while, also in this last-named mansion, genuine Moorish woodwork of elaborately inlaid ebony and larch is in two niches near the entrance to the Sala de Embajadores. SACRED STATUARY, _SILLERÍAS_ OR CHOIR-STALLS, AND _RETABLOS_ The genius of the wood-carvers of older Spain is manifested chiefly in three groups of objects--sacred statuary, choir-stalls, and _retablos_. Among this people, and probably by reason of its cheapness, plain, or gilt, or polychrome painted wood has always been a favourite material for the statues of their temples, whether such statues were employed alone, or as an accessory to a larger article of sacred furniture, such as a pulpit, or a _sillería_, or an altar-screen. So powerful, in fact, has been the vogue of this material here,[48] that even to-day the Spanish people, making, in Symonds' happy phrase, "representation an object in itself, independently of its spiritual significance," attempt to elevate the most remarkable of their wooden, and by preference their coloured wooden, statuary (typically defended by Pacheco's indigested tome), to rank beside the noblest and the purest monuments of bronze and marble; denoting, by this reckless and uneducated partiality, a positively national misconception of the true domain of art. [48] My readers are no doubt aware that every Spanish hamlet has its wooden image of the Virgin, badly executed as a rule, and rendered doubly hideous by a gaudy gown. Most of these local images are believed to hold the power of working miracles, or at least to have been fashioned and conducted to their present shrine by supernatural agency--on which account the populace and their pastors call these latter _imagenes aparecidas_, as distinct from _manufactured_ images. Such are the Virgins of Montserrat, Granada, and numerous other cities, towns, or villages of this illiterate and ill-starred Peninsula. The curious may refer for every kind of detail to Villafañe's _Compendious History of the Wonder-working Images of Spain_, which numbered in this author's day (his book was published in 1740) one hundred and eighty-nine. But the most extraordinary miracle of all was that which is recalled, with pious gravity, by Bertaut de Rouen. Speaking of the gilt-wood image of Nuestra Señora del Pilar at Zaragoza, he says:--"On y void quantité de lampes d'argent et on m'en raconta un miracle qu'il me fut impossible de ne pas croire. C'est d'un pauvre homme qui ayant eu la jambe coupée pour une blessure, et s'estant bien recommandé à _Nostra Señora del Pilar_, il se trouva un jour avec sa mesme jambe qu'il avoit déja fait enterrer. Y'ay sceu l'histoire du chirurgien mesme qui coupa cette jambe et de quantité de témoins de veuë. Il