Anyhow it seems strange that the roads of the Romans should be due to the inspiration of the Teutons; and that parliaments should begin in Spain because they came from Germany.

If I looked about in these parts for a local emblem like that of the eagle, I might very well find it in the lion.
The lion is common enough, of course, in Christian art both hagiological and heraldic.

Besides the cavern of Bethlehem of which I shall speak presently, is the cavern of St.Jerome, where he lived with that real or legendary lion who was drawn by the delicate humour of Carpaccio and a hundred other religious painters.
That it should appear in Christian art is natural; that it should appear in Moslem art is much more singular, seeing that Moslems are in theory forbidden so to carve images of living things.
Some say the Persian Moslems are less particular; but whatever the explanation, two lions of highly heraldic appearance are carved over that Saracen gate which Christians call the gate of St.Stephen; and the best judges seem to agree that, like so much of the Saracenic shell of Zion, they were partly at least copied from the shields and crests of the Crusaders.
And the lions graven over the gate of St.Stephen might well be the text for a whole book on the subject.

For if they indicate, however indirectly, the presence of the Latins of the twelfth century, they also indicate the earlier sources from which the Latin life had itself been drawn.

The two lions are pacing, passant as the heralds would say, in two opposite directions almost as if prowling to and fro.
And this also might well be symbolic as well as heraldic.
For if the Crusaders brought the lion southward in spite of the conventional fancy of Moslem decoration, it was only because the Romans had previously brought the lion northward to the cold seas and the savage forests.