We must, however, distinguish between the Motto and the _Slug horn_ (or, as Sir George Mackenzie gives it, upon the more Southern pronunciation, _Slogan_[282]); the latter being a _cry de guerre_, whereas the former (though one may sometimes answer both purposes) seems more to relate to some historical circumstance by which the Family have been signalized. The original idea of these words, I have no doubt, related to War, and operated as what we now call the Watch-Word, and more emphatically _the Word_ by the circulation of which the King can, at this day, call his guards about him, as the Chiefs of Scotland formerly assembled their Vassals in their respective divisions or clans. The French call it a _Mot_; and the Italians, by an augmentation, _Motto_; which last we have adopted when we speak in an heraldic style. The true Scottish term is a _Ditton_, the _Slughorn_ being properly the _cry de Guerre_. Not to go into the antiquity of Mottoes, or Armory, further than the subject in question shall lead me, I shall content myself with observing that Armorial Bearings in general, with us in England, have little more than the fancy of the party, with Heraldic sanction, for their foundation; or some distant allusion to the name. Take one singular instance of this last case, which Mr. Boyer (in his Theatre of Honour) gives, as a whimsical bearing. The Arms of the name of _Matthias_ are three Dice (sixes as the highest throw), having, I make no doubt (though Mr. Boyer gives no reason for it), a reference to the election of St. Matthias into the Apostleship: "And the lot fell upon Matthias." One of the writers in the Antiquarian Discourses (Mr. Agarde) thinks the old Motto of the _Caves_, of Stanford, in Northamptonshire, a happy conceit; the ancient Crest being a Grey-hound currant, with a label issuing out of its mouth, with these words, "Adsum; Cave." Had the _Cavè_ stood alone, without the Dog or the _Adsum_, it might have been very well, and have operated religiously, morally, or politically: but otherwise the Dog seems to run away with the Wit. The Family, since Mr. Agarde's time, appear to have been sensible of this awkward compound, and have adopted the French word _Gardez_ for the Motto; though I think they had better have kept the _Cavè_ (as I have observed), and hanged the Grey-hound; though perhaps it was conceived at the time the _Adsum_ was dropped, that Ca-vè, in the Latin, might be confounded with the English, _Cave_; and that it would have appeared as if they had taken the name for the Motto, without another Latin word to denote that language; and therefore might take _Gardez_, which shews itself to be French. [282] The Glossary to Douglas's Virgil adduces the Term from the Anglo-Saxon _Slegan_, interficere.