cards, from the fact that they were originally supposed to represent portions of coats of arms.

The very names of the cards have undergone many permutations. The Germans used to call our hearts, diamonds, clubs, and spades, by the names of hearts, leaves, acorns, and bellsHerzen, Grünen, Eicheln, and Schellen. The old Italian names for the four suits were cups, swords, batons (or clubs), and money-coppe, spade, bastoni, and danari. The French names, referring to our four suits are coeur, carreau, trèfle, and pique. The latter term has no analogy to our spades, but the hearts and diamonds do well enough, and the trefoil is a more understandable term for the pip so named than our club.

In the Hindoo pack of ninety-six cards-as I learn from a newspaper cutting, in which the original authority is not quoted-there are eight suits of twelve cards each. The pips on these suits are severally represented by a pine-apple, a round spot, another spot differently coloured, a sword, a head, a parasol, a square, and an oval. The Hindoos have also a pack with a hundred and twenty cards, consisting of twelve suits of ten cards each, of different colours, the pips representing the sublimities of the Hindoo mythology.

The court (or coat) cards have pictures as various as the pips. "It is all very well," says the unknown writer referred to, "to have a king and a queen, but why a knave should gain entrance into such goodly company does not seem very clear." The old German cards had neither queen nor knave; but instead, they had a superior officer (ober) and a subaltern (unter).

B2

In some of the playing cards of Southern Europe the queen and knave were likewise absent. În the early French cards each king had a special name, besides that of the suit over which he governed. Thus, in the pack still existing, the four kings are called Charlemagne, Cæsar, Alexander, and David; the four queens are Judith, Rachel, Argine, and Pallas; while the four knaves or valets are La Hire, Hector, Lancelot, and Hogier. The French Tarots have four court personages-king, queen, chevalier, and valet. In cards, as in chess, the king is always present; but the queen and the knave in the one kind of play materials, and the queen, the bishop, the knight, and the rook in the other, have undergone many curious changes.

In modern packs the kings, queens, and knaves are sometimes made double-headed, in order that keen whist-players may not expose the nature of their hands to their opponents. Attempts have been made at various times to introduce court cards of a more rational shape and figure, but such attempts have signally failed. Card-players will accept only the old-fashioned heraldic kings, queens, and knaves. During the first French Revolution card-makers made the four kings to represent Moliere, Lafontaine, Voltaire, and Rousseau; while the four queens were represented by Justice, Prudence, Fortitude, and Temperance; and the four knaves or servants by soldiers and workmen. Another pack had the fraternities" of war, peace, art, and commerce for the kings; the "liberties" of the press, religion, marriage, and the professions for the queens; and the "equalities" of duties, ranks, rights, and races for the knaves or valets.

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Houbigant, in 1818, produced cards with the court costumes of France at four widely different periods. Cotta, the bookseller of Tübingen, had figures representing twelve characters from Schiller's Joan of Arc" for court-cards; and in 1815 there were produced at Frankfort packs with Wellington as the knave of diamonds, and Blucher as the knave of clubs-a sorry com pliment, we should fancy, if we did not re member that the knaves are not so designated on the Continent. A few years since there were published in the United States cards having portraits of Washington, Adams, Franklin, and Lafayette for the four kings; Venus, Ceres, Minerva, and Fortune for the four queens; and four Indian chiefs as the knaves-as curious a family party as one could well meet on a long summer's day.

The ace is in many games the superior card. In England cards pay a duty to the revenue, and the ace of spades is the card which bears on ite face the evidence of the tax being duly paid to the Government. When the duty was a shilling, many means were taken to evade it, such as selling waste cards with the corners cut off, selling second-hand cards, &c.; but now that the duty is reduced to threepence, there is an absolute penalty incurred by both sellers and buyers of cards on which it has not been paid.

It is scarcely necessary to tell the reader that every pack of cards consists of fifty-two, distributed into four suits, each suit consisting of king, queen, and knave-the court cards-and the plebeians or plain cards, bearing severally_a number of pips from one (the ace) to ten. In the cards as usually sold and wrappered, the

Moguls are the finest, the Harrys the second best, and the Highlanders the third class. Nearly all the card-makers adopt this distinction, however much they may vary in the style of ornamentation adopted for their backs; and if I am asked whose are the very best cards made in England, I unhesitatingly answer-De la Rue's.

So much, then, for the cards themselves, of which there are upwards of five millions produced and sold every year by about six or seven principal manufacturers. Of the various games played with them in Great Britain it will be my duty now to speak. The principal of them are, Whist, for four players; Cribbage, for two, three, or four players; Ecarté for two; and Loo, Pope Joan, and Vingt-un among what are called the "round" or family games. Of Whist I have roken elsewhere, this scientific game requiring a Handbook for itself. Indeed, since the original treatise by Hoyle, eighty years since-which treatise was to some extent improved and explained by Mr. Matthews, of Bath, in his Advice to Young Players-there have been written numerous volumes more or less scientific and authoritative. I am not acquainted, however, with any modern Handbook to the other cardgames except that published by Mr. Bohn, which, however excellent and reliable, is fitted rather for the book-shelf than the pocket. Without further preface, then, let us pass to the main business of this little volume, and describe the principal games of cards played in England.

WHIST.

CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCTORY.

"Troy owes to Homer what Whist owes to Hoyle."

EDMOND HOYLE, the great authority on Whist, published his treatise in 1743: all the writers and commentators on the game since then have but improved on his text, and cleared away some of the obscurities which defaced his pages. But previous to Hoyle, by some ten years, Richard Seymour, gentleman, published a book of card games, which he called the Compleat Gamester for the Use of the Young Princesses. In it he gave an account of the manner of playing Whist, which he called "Whisk." Though he tells us that this is a very ancient game in England, and that very few persons play correctly at it, his instructions do not give us a much more exalted idea of the morality of the times than we gather from a perusal of Mr. Thackeray's Four Georges Large sums of money, he informs us, were "played away at this game," which fact "put sharpers upon inventions to deceive and cheat