Democratic Sentinel, Volume 18, Number 7, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 March 1894 — Motto to Coat-of-Arrns. [ARTICLE]

Motto to Coat-of-Arrns.

The art of composing the motto was subjected to severe rules. The “body” and the “soul” were required to be in such relation to each other that the “soul” should invariably explain the “body.” The legend must be concise, neatly turned and ingeniously suggestive—like the “Desdlchado” of the disinherited knight in “Ivanhoe.” It had always to be applicable to the person as well as to the material object forming the “body,” and it must not be drawn from things unknown, nor must it be too enigmatic or too facile, too humble, or, above all, too arrogant. Again, it was essential that the figure should be agreeable to the eye, and its idea to the mind. Finally, the device was perfect only when the “body” was unique and the “soul” or motto in a language which was not the mother tongue of him who bore it. The motto ought not to contain more than eight syllables. That of our Order of the Garter, “Honi soit

qui mal y pense,” contained only seven; that of our Kings, “Dieu et mon droit,” only four. The device of Leo X. was a yoke with “Suave” for the motto —“The yoke of the Lord is sweet.” That of Henry 111., King of France and Poland, two crowns on the earth and one up above, with the motto, “Manet ultima coelo;” that of Charles V., the pillars of Hercules, and the legend, “Ne plus ultra.” Devices went out of vogue in the seventeenth century, and now survive only in the coats of arms of the older families, where the reader, if he be so disposed, may study them at leisure, and examine how nearly they approach the ideal embodied in the foregoing rules.-All the Year Round.