t and illustrate a very general and exceedingly active phase
of our ancestors' minds, that, turning over the refuse materials of
history, we proceed to disinter, from their worm-eaten pages, the dead
and almost forgotten art of Device--an art that once claimed an
extensive literature, and canons of criticism, peculiarly its own.
From about 250 to 400 years ago, were the high and palmy days of this
'dainty art.' Then, the learned and subtile schoolmen of the age did
not disdain to write upon it, with ink scarcely dry upon the pens with
which they had been discussing the most abstruse dogmas of theology;
then, not unfrequently, the cureless curate, by the concoction of a
happy device for a generous patron, found himself a beneficed bishop.
Nor is such preferment to be wondered at. The qualifications
considered necessary to constitute a device-maker, were fully equal to
those which Imlac described to Rasselas as requisite to form a poet.
'Philosophy and poetry,' wrote Pere le Moyne, 'history and fable, all
that is taught in colleges, all that is learned in the world, are
condensed and epitomised in this great pursuit; in short, if there be
an art which requires an all-accomplished workman, that art is
device-making.' Ruscelli says: 'It belongs only to the most exquisite
wits and best-refined judgments to undertake the making of devices.'
Yet, though the learned doctors of Padua, Wirtemberg, and the
Sorbonne, engaged in deep disquisitions on the emblematical
properties, natural and mythical, of cranes and crescents, sunflowers
and salamanders, pelicans and porcupines--the length and language of
mottoes--how the wind should be pictorially portrayed, with many other
equally weighty considerations, still the chivalrous knights of the
tournay, and the fair ladies of their _devoirs_, attained proficiency
in the art. Wolf of Wolfrath, the lute-player, records, that at a
grand tournament held at Vienna in 1560, crowns of laurel were awarded
to the knights who wore the wittiest devices, as well as to those who
excelled in feats of arms.

'But,' the reader very probably exclaims, 'what was this art of
device?'

It consisted in translating an idea into a symbol, and illustrating
that symbol by a tersely-expressed motto. 'The object of a device,'
according to the Lord of Fossez, 'was to express covertly, by means of
a picture and words, a conception of human wit;' and it was
distinguished from an emblem, inasmuch as the emblem demon