[Illustration: _Symeoni._] The other is the device which the Aldi, celebrated printers of Venice, from A.D. 1490 to 1563, assumed, of the dolphin and anchor, but which Titus, son of Vespasian, had long before adopted, with the motto “PROPERA TARDE,”[16] _Hasten slowly_: “_facendo_,” says Symeoni, “_vna figura moderata della velocità di questo, e della grauezza di quell’ altra, nel modo che noi veggiamo dinanzi à i libri d’ Aldo_.” But the heraldry of mankind is a boundless theme, and we might by simple beat of drum heraldic collect almost a countless host of crests, badges, and quarterings truly emblematical, and adopted and intended to point out peculiarities or remarkable events and fancies in the histories of the coat-armour families of the world. The emblematism of bodily sign or action constitutes the language of the dumb. An amusing instance occurs in the Abbé Blanchet’s “APOLOGUES ORIENTAUX,” in his description of “_The Silent Academy, or the Emblems_:”— “There was at Hamadan, a city of Persia, a celebrated academy, of which the first statute was conceived in these terms; _The academicians shall think much, write little, and speak the very least that is possible._ It was named _the silent Academy_; and there was not in Persia any truly learned man who had not the ambition of being admitted to it. Dr. Zeb, an imaginary person, author of an excellent little work, THE GAG, learned, in the retirement of the province where he was born, there was one place vacant in the silent Academy. He sets out immediately; he arrives at Hamadan, and presenting himself at the door of the hall where the academicians are assembled, he prays the servant to give this billet to the president: _Dr. Zeb asks humbly the vacant place._ The servant immediately executed the commission, but the Doctor and his billet arrived too late,—the place was already filled.