"The Coming Race", Chapter V, by Edward Bulwer-Lytton

So this completely unknown race that is not even human and doesn't have any ability to comprehend the English language (or presumably any human language), apparently knows to shake their head for no, and presumably nod for yes? Verbal communication incompatible, but non-verbal communication fully compatible? Fascinating...

No matter how many times I encounter the word divan, I never have any idea how to pronounce. This is what we get for importing so many French words into English... :-P

lancinating: characterized by piercing or stabbing sensations

Louis Cranach: a.k.a. Lucas Cranach der Ältere, a German Renaissance painter and printmaker, being court painter to the Electors of Saxony, and friend of Martin Luther, and thus unsurprisingly would embrace the Protestant Reformation.

There's also his son, Lucas Cranach der Jüngere, also a painter. So it is I suppose entirely possible the author could be referencing either of these two, but given the Elder seems a bit more notable in the histories than the Younger, I'm guessing he means the Elder.

"a soft sibilant monosyllable - S.Si" I have absolutely no idea in the slightest what sound Bulwer-Lytton had in mind here. Ugh. I can't even begin to guess. But I had to record something, so there you go.

duodecimo: A book having pages of a duodecimo size. What size, you ask? A size of paper, so called because it is originally made by folding and cutting a single sheet from a printing press into 12 leaves; 7 inches high (~18 cm), by approximately 4.5 inches wide (~11.5 cm).

Peri: from Persian mythology, a mythical superhuman being, originally represented as evil but subsequently as a good or graceful genie or fairy

The picture used is "Botticelli, Mystic Nativity, detail 2", photo taken by Frans Vandewalle, used here under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/).

Ok, so the wings of the Vril should be much larger (yes, we will learn soon enough the name of these beings our narrator is dealing with are the Vril-ya, that shouldn't exactly come as a spoiler), and should have a mix of males and females, but it's hard enough to find a large group of dancing, winged, human-like beings at all, and this was the best I could come up with.

To follow along: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1951/1951-h/1951-h.htm#link2HCH0005