Another, but more sedentary amusement with Mary, was the composition of devices. To excel in these, required some wit and judgment. A device was the skilful coupling of a few expressive words with any engraved figure or picture. It was an art intimately connected with the science of heraldry, and seems to have suggested the modern seal and motto. The composition of these devices was, as it is somewhere called, only "an elegant species of trifling;" but it had something intellectual in it, which the best informed ladies of the French court liked. An old author, who writes upon this subject, elevates it to a degree of importance rather amusing. "It delights the eye," he says, "it captivates the imagination, it is also profitable and useful; and therefore surpasseth all other arts, and also painting, since this only represents the body and exquisite features of the face, whereas a device exposes the rare ideas and gallant sentiments of its author; it also excels poetry, in as much as it joineth profit with pleasure, since none merit the title of devices unless they at once please by their grace, and yield profit by their doctrine." Mary's partialities were commonly lasting, and when in very different circumstances, she frequently loved to return to this amusement of her childhood. Some of the emblems she invented, betray much elegance and sensibility of mind. On the death of her husband Francis, she took for her device a little branch of the liquorice-tree, whose root only is sweet, all the rest of the plant being bitter, and the motto was, _Dulce meum terra tegit_. On her cloth of state was embroidered the sentence, _En ma fin est mon commencement_; "a riddle," says Haynes, "I understand not;" but which evidently meant to inculcate a lesson of humility, and to remind her that life, with all its grandeur, was the mere prologue to eternity. The French historian, Mezeray, mentions also that Mary had a medal struck, on which was represented a vessel in a storm, with its masts broken and falling, illustrated by the motto, _Nunquam nisi rectam_; indicating a determination rather to perish than deviate from the path of integrity.[13] When she was in England, she embroidered for the Duke of Norfolk a hand with a sword in it, cutting vines, with the motto _Virescit vulnere virtus_. In these and similar fancies, she embodied strong and often original thoughts with much delicacy.