ments of husbandry, were considered improper subjects for the
emblem of a device; consequently, that of the Academia della Crusca
was set down as decidedly vulgar, it being a sieve, with _Il piu bel
fior ne coglie_ (It collects the finest flour of it)--a play on the
word _crusca_ (bran), assumed as the title of the Academy, from its
having been instituted for the express purpose of purifying (sifting)
the Italian language.

Objects that were not recognisable unless painted in colours, were
also inadmissible; thus the otherwise clever device of the Earl of
Essex--a rough diamond, with the motto, _Dum formas minuis_ (In
fashioning, you diminish), came under the censure of the critics. In
like manner, objects not easily distinguishable from others, were
liable to the same condemnation. The celebrated device assumed by Mary
Queen of Scots on the death of her first husband, Francis II.,
representing a liquorice-plant, with _Dulce meum terra tegit_ (The
earth covers my sweet), was pronounced faulty, because the
liquorice-plant could not be readily distinguished from other shrubs,
the roots of which wanted the property of sweetness so necessary to
give point to the device. Unnatural or chimerical figures could not be
admitted, excepting those to which tradition or classical authors had
given fixed forms and attributes--as the mermaid, harpy, phoenix;
consequently, a device representing a winged tortoise, the motto,
_Amor addidit_ (Love has added them), was improper. Qualities ascribed
to animate or inanimate bodies by the ancients, were considered
legitimate, though known by the moderns to be fictitious. Thus the
dolphin, from the story of Arion, appears in devices as the friend of
the distressed; the salamander, living in fire, typifies the strong
passions, natural, yet destructive to their victim; the young stork,
carrying the old one, illustrates filial piety; the crane, which,
according to Pliny, holds a stone in its claw to avert sleep, is a fit
emblem of watchfulness; the pomegranate, king of fruits, wears a regal
crown; the crocodile, symbol of hypocrisy, sheds deceitful tears. In
short, almost everything that was in the heavens above, in the earth
beneath, and in the waters under the earth, was seized by the
device-maker, and converted into a symbol of some virtue, vice, or
other quality of the mind. Nor was there only one emblem taken from
each object; by varying the circumstances, they were multiplied to an
enormous