The name of the State or Territory is inscribed above each seal, with the date of the year in which it was admitted to the Union, or organized under a territorial form of government. The seals occur in the order of their dates, the series beginning with the Thirteen Original States--which start in the easterly window in the order in which they signed the Constitution--and continuing around the room to the three Territories of New Mexico, Arizona, and Oklahoma. Taken all in all they form one of the most interesting decorations in the Library, for the reason that the artist has succeeded in making a harmonious whole out of a very heterogeneous collection of designs. The originals, of course, were separately drawn, often by persons unacquainted with heraldry, and never with any particular thought of fitting them into a single series like the present. The result is that these originals show the greatest diversity of treatment. The key, so to speak, is continually changing. Sometimes, for example, a figure introduced in the foreground is dwarfed by an altogether disproportionate background, while in other cases the figure overpowers everything else; copied exactly, any heraldic or artistic unity of effect would be entirely lacking. Accordingly, after getting together a complete collection of the seals--in every instance an authentic impression of the original obtained from the State secretary--Mr. Schladermundt re-drew, and often almost redesigned his material to bring it into accordance with his decorative scheme. Just what it was that Mr. Schladermundt undertook to do may best be seen in the accompanying engravings of the Seal of Kansas, the first giving the seal as used on official papers, the second copied from Mr. Schladermundt’s cartoon. It will be seen that the spirit of the seal and its heraldic intention are the same in both. The only difference is that in Mr. Schladermundt’s design certain changes of proportion have been made to make the seal harmonize with the style to which the artist wished to have all his designs adhere. In many cases, particularly in the seals of the Thirteen Original States, the original has hardly been changed at all. In the seal of the State of Washington, indeed, which consists merely of a portrait of Washington himself, Mr. Schladermundt has unobtrusively added the Washington arms in the upper corner of the design, in order to suggest the desirable heraldic conventionality more fully; occasionally, too, it has been necessary to omit certain minor details as being unsuited to the breadth of treatment necessary in stained glass--but, as a rule, Mr. Schladermundt has followed very carefully the specifications contained in the authoritative legislative enactments. [Illustration: DOME ORNAMENT. BY ALBERT WEINERT.]