hand."

[Illustration: FIG. 1.]

It is not our purpose to historically trace the evolution of cards--this
is a subject beyond the reach of the present article--but a look farther
afield will give us evidence that during the last three centuries there
has been a constant adaptation of cards to purposes which take them
beyond their intention as the instruments for card playing only. The
idea that playing cards had their origin in the later years of Charles
VI. of France may be disposed of at once as a popular error, though it
is true that the earliest authentic examples which still exist are
parts of the two packs of cards which were produced for the amusement of
that King, by the hands of Jacques Gringonneur, and of which seventeen
are preserved in the Bibliotheque Nationale of Paris.

These are the most early forms of playing cards, and are known as
"Tarots" (as distinguished from "Numerals," or cards which have the
consecutively marked "suit" signs), and which had evidently a purpose
outside the ordinary games of playing cards as known to us. The "Tarot"
pack consists variously of seventy-two, seventy-seven, or seventy-eight
cards, including the "Tarots," which give them their distinctive name.
"Tarot" as a game was familiar three centuries ago in England, but is so
no longer, although it has a limited use in other parts of Europe still.
One of the "Tarot" cards, of the Bibliotheque Nationale, "La Mort," is
shown as the first of our illustrations (Fig. 1).

[Illustration: FIG. 2.]

[Illustration: FIG. 3.]

Familiar to those who are conversant with the literature of playing
cards will be the Knave of Clubs, shown in Fig. 2, which is one of the
fragments of a pack of cards found, in 1841, by Mr. Chatto, in the
wastepaper used to form the pasteboard covers of a book. These cards are
printed in outline from wood blocks and the colour filled in by
stencilling, a method employed in the manufacture of cards down to a
very few years ago. The date of these cards may safely be taken as not
more recent than 1450, and they are most interesting as being coeval
with, if not antecedent to, the most early form of printed book
illustration as shown in the "Biblia Pauperum."[B] The archaic drawing
of the features, with its disregard of facial perspective, and the
wondrous cervical anatomy, do not lessen our admiration of the vigour
and "go" shown in this early example of the art of the designer and wood
engraver.

It is in int