ility, but
they were little fitted for the execution of figures of any size, and
especially was it impossible to think of using them for such historic
bas-reliefs as those upon which the Assyrians marshalled hundreds, or
rather thousands, of busy figures. Chaldaean doorways may, however, have
been sometimes flanked with lions and bulls,[326] we are indeed tempted to
assign to such a position one monument which has been described by
travellers, namely, the lion both Rich and Layard saw half buried in the
huge ruin at Babylon called the _Kasr_.[327] It is larger than life. It
stands upon a plinth, with its paws upon the figure of a struggling man.
There is a circular hole in its jaw bigger than a man's fist. The
workmanship is rough; so too, perhaps, is that of the basalt lion seen by
Loftus at Abou-Sharein. This latter is about fifty-four inches high and its
original place may very well have been before one of the doorways of the
building.[328]

Of all animal forms, that of the lion was the first to afford materials for
decorative composition of any value, and even after all the centuries that
have passed, the lion has not lost his vogue in the East. We might, if we
chose, multiply examples of this persistence, but we shall be content with
quoting one. In the centre of Asia Minor, at the village of Angora, in
which I passed three months of the year 1861, I encountered these lions at
every turn. A short distance off, in the village of Kalaba, there was a
fountain of Turkish construction in which a lion, quite similar in style to
those of Assyria, had been inserted.[329] In the court of a mosque there
was a lion in the round, a remarkable work by some Graeco-Roman
sculptor.[330] There and in other towns of Asia Minor, lions from the
Seljukian period are by no means rare, and even now they are made in
considerable numbers. After the labours of the day we sometimes passed the
evenings in the villas of the rich Greek merchants, which were nearly all
on the east of the town. Most of these houses were of recent construction,
and were filled with mirrors, fine carpets, and engravings. In front of the
house, and in the centre of a large paved and trellised court, there were
fountains, sometimes ornamented with considerable taste, in which, on great
occasions, a slender jet of water would give coolness to the air. The
angles of nearly every one of these fountains were marked with small white
marble lions, heavy and awkward in shape