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The Correct Arms of the State of New York, 



Richard, — Three glorious suns, each one a perfect sun; 

 Not separated with the racking clouds, 

 But severed in a pale clear-shining sky. 

 See ! see ! they join, embrace and seem to kiss, 

 As if they vowed some league inviolable. 

 Now are they but one lamp, one light, one sun: 

 In this the heavens prefigure some event. 



Edward. — 'Tis wondrous strange, the like yet never heard of. 

 I think it cites us, brother, to the field, 

 That we the sons of brave Plantagenet, 

 Each one already blazing by our meeds, 

 Should, notwithstanding, join our lights together, 

 And overshine the earth, as this the world. 



A few years later in English history, Shakespeare makes Eichard 

 III, then Duke of Gloster, break out in triumphant soliloquy, in the 

 first words of the play with that title: 



Gloster. — Now is the winter of our discontent 



Made glorious summer by this sun of York ; 

 And all the clouds, that lower'd upon our house, 

 In the deep bosom of the ocean buried. 



I will quote no more of this soliloquy than the allusion to the badge 

 of the new king, Edward IV. . 



But it will be inquired why, readily granting that our New York 

 legislators were familiar with Shakespeare, and familiar with this 

 Yorkist legend, why it should in consequence be surmised that they 

 designed to put into the shield of our Arms a Yorkist sun ? I will 

 not attempt to discuss the question asked at length. But in the first 

 j)lace I must say that negatively I regard the adoption of a sun, full 

 like this one, as the adoption of so uncommon an emblem that I cannot 

 help inferring that the New York convention had some extraordinary 

 reason for adopting it. The story of the three suns becoming one, 

 unconnected with any subsequent history, we easily and naturally let 

 pass as an idle legend. But when we find that monuments were estab- 

 lished in memory of the alleged occurrence, it acquires a new import- 

 ance and has taken its place in history. Afiirmatively, I think that 

 this historic Yorkist sun may be claimed to be the sun in the arms of 

 New York for a first reason, that it is more like a Yorkist sun than 

 any I have ever seen. On the coin or rose noble of Edward IV, it is 

 a full sun; on the seal of the State of New York of 1777, it sliows 

 more than eleven-twelfths of the sun — all that it was possible to intro- 

 duce compatible with the introduction of the other objects in the 

 shield. A sun is an uncommon emblem in any arms as compared 



