of Kronos at Athens or at Thebes, and which was declared to be emblematical of Human Life.

One of the older Latin versions, printed in 1507, presents the foregoing illustrative frontispiece.

As the book has come down to modern times it is, generally, what has sometimes been named, nudum Emblema, a naked Emblem, because it has neither device nor artistic drawing, but, like Shakespeare's comparison of all the world to a stage in which man plays many parts, the course of Life, with its discipline, false hopes and false pleasures, is in the Tablet so described,—in fact so delineated,* as to have enabled the Dutch designer and engraver, Romyn de Hooghe, in 1670, to have pictured "the whole story of Human Life as narrated to the Grecian sage."

The Moral of the Allegory may not be set forth with entire clearness in the picture, but it can be given in the words of one of the Golden Sentences of Democritus,- see Gale's Opus. Mythol. :

"That human happiness does not result from bodily excellencies nor from riches, but is founded on uprightness of mind and on righteousness of conduct."

Coins and medals furnish most valuable examples of emblematical figures; indeed some of the Emblem writers, as Sambucus in 1564, were among the earliest to publish impressions or engravings of ancient Roman money, on which are frequently given very interesting representations of customs and symbolical acts. On Grecian coins, which Priestley, in his Lectures on History, vol. i. p. 126,-highly praises for "a design, an attitude, a force, and a delicacy, in the expression even of the muscles and veins of human figures,"-we find, to use heraldic language, that the owl is the crest of Athens,-a wolf's head, that of Argos, and a tortoise the badge of the Peloponnesus. The whole history of Louis XIV. and that of his great adversary,

* See Plate I., containing De Hooghe's engraving, reproduced on a smaller scale.

William III., are represented in volumes containing the medals that were struck to commemorate the leading events of their reigns, and though outrageously untrue to nature and reality by the adoption of Roman costumes and classic symbols, they serve as records of remarkable occurrences.

Heraldry throughout employs the language of Emblems;—it is the picture-history of families, of tribes and of nations, of princes and emperors. Many a legend and many a strange fancy may be mixed up with it and demand almost the credulity of simplest childhood in order to obtain our credence; yet in the literature of Chivalry and Honours there are enshrined abundant records of the glory that belonged to mighty names. I recall now but one instance. In the fine folio lately emblazoned with the well-known motto "GANG FORWARD," "I AM READY," what volumes, to those who can interpret each mark and sign and tutored symbol, are wrapped up in the Examples of the ornamental Heraldry of the sixteenth Century: London, 1867, 1868.

The custom of taking a device or badge, if not a motto, is traced by Paolo Giovio, in his Dialogo dell' Imprese militari et amorose, ed. 1574, p. 9,* to the earliest times of history. He writes,

"To bear these emblems was an ancient usage." GIO. "It is a point not to be doubted, that the ancients used to bear crests and ornaments on the helmets and on the shields: for we see this clearly in Virgil, when he made the catalogue of the nations which came in favour of Turnus against the Trojans, in the eighth book of the Eneid; Amphiaraus then (as Pindar says) at the war of Thebes bore a dragon on his shield. Similarly Statius writes of Capaneus and of Polinices, that the one bore the Hydra, and the other the Sphynx," &c.

"Il portar queste imprese fu costume antico. GIO. Non è punto da dubitare, che gli antichi vsassero di portar Cimieri & ornamenti ne gli elmetti e ne gli scudi: perche si vede chiaramete in Vergil. quãdo fà il Catalogo delli genti, che venero in fauore di Turno contra i Troiani, nell' ottauo dell' Eneida; Anfiarao ancora (come dice Pindaro) alla guerra di Thebe porto vn dragone nello scudo. Statio scriue similmente di Capaneo & di Polinice; che quelli portò l'Hidra, e queste la Sfinge," &c.

But these were simple emblems, without motto inscribed. The same Paolo Giovio, and other writers after him,* assign both "picture and short posie," to two of the early Emperors of Rome.

"Augustus, wishing to show how self-governed and moderate he was in all his affairs, never rash and hasty to believe the first reports and informations of his servants, caused to be struck, among several others, on a gold medal of his own, a Butterfly and a Crab, signifying quickness by the Butterfly, and by the Crab slowness, the two things which constitute a temperament necessary for a Prince."

The motto, as figured below,-" MAKE HASTE LEISURELY.”

The Device is thus applied in Whitney's Emblems, p. 121,

and dedicated to two eminent judges of Elizabeth's reign;

*

See Gabriel Symeon's Devises ov Emblemes Heroiques et Morales, ed. à Lyon, 1561, pp. 218, 219, 220.