eresting 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.

[Illustration: FIG. 4.]

In Fig. 3 we have one of the cards from a series of "Tarots" of Italian
origin, also preserved in the Bibliotheque 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 boards of an old book--a
source which may be commended to the watchfulness of the bookbinder, as
the bindings of old books are still likely to provide other interesting
examples.

[Illustration: FIG. 5]

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-bow, for the purpose of
securing 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 obsolete missive weapon where they w