Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 5).djvu/80

 It is in interesting relation to the knaves of a pack of cards to note the curious conservatism which has belonged to them during the last four centuries and a half. In a MS. in the British Museum, written in the year 1377, the monkish writer, in a moralization on the life of man, suggests its resemblance to a game of cards: and he gives us a description and the attributes of some of the cards. Of those which we now know as knaves, he says two of them hold their halberds or arms downwards and two of them upwards—a distinction which is retained on many of the playing cards still manufactured.

In Fig. 3 we have one of the cards from a series of "Tarots" of Italian origin, also preserved in the Bibliothèque Nationale, and which may be dated about 1470. These are very beautiful in design, and indicate that they were thought worthy of the employment of the highest artistic talent.

We have an example of a somewhat more modern date in the Knave of Diamonds (Fig. 4), in which the costume and character point to the early part of the sixteenth century as the period of their production. This also is from a fragment discovered in the hoards of an old book—a source which may be commended o the watchfulness of the bookbinder, as the bindings of old books are still likely provide other interesting examples.

Before us are parts of two packs of cards which were discovered in Edinburgh, in 1821, pasted up in a book of household accounts, one of its leaves bearing the date of 1562; and it would be no great stretch of fancy to believe that they were taken to Edinburgh by some follower of Mary Queen of Scots on her return to Scotland a year before this date. These cards are of Flemish make: on one of them is the name "Jehan Henault," who was a card-maker in Antwerp in 1543, and in passing we may remark that at this period there was a considerable trade between London and France in playing cards of Flemish manufacture. Old playing cards may be looked for in most unlikely places: a few years ago two nearly complete packs were found wedged in an old cross-how, for the purpose of sceuring the bow where it had worked loose in the head; they were of sixteenth century manufacture, and had doubtless been the means of relieving the tedium of many a weary watch or waiting, in field or fortress, before they found their resting-place of a couple of centuries in the