ess. Our author, in a
letter to his cousin, Henry Antrobus, quotes the eminent Brough as
styling it not only the most authoritative little book on its topic,
certainly the most interesting one; hit the only volume on the
subject "which is not a confusing and puerile farrago of nonsense--
troublesome to look into and unsatisfactory to acquire."
Certainly our ancient enthusiasts record can be learned and used
systematically, exactly as is the case with such excellent and
approved systems of chiromancy as Mr. Heron-Allen's and others.
It may be thought fortunate for modern students of card-divination
that the work has survived, so complete and clear. Its discreetness,
too, is delightfully adroit, when it suggests that its tenses, past,
present, and future, are not as definite as one might desire.

There is no copy of the hook in the British Museum, nor in the
Paris Bibliotheque Nationale, nor in any public collection of
America, England, or France that I can name. One worn but
perfect MS copy is to be found in a private library in the United
States. Another might yet be sought in far Australia, if still owned
by descendants of Mr. Antrobus's young ward. Only by a special
personal interest in the matter, and with a sense of risk to an
heirloom, I am permitted to make the manuscript for this edition.

Undoubtedly, as "R.A.," Mr. Antrobus dressed the mystic
"Significances" of the cards in the book's "Tavola" in English less
blunt and uncultivated than they came to his ears from the lips of
the dying "George--." But that he took no other liberties of
the least consequence is pretty certain. He respected the
"Supernaturall" here, as in his grave brochure on the Cock Lane
Ghost, which spectre, alas! mightily took him in. And, by the way,
the reader will please observe in his pages here following that
though the method of "building" and so of forming the "Square,"
and of "reducing" it, seems at first glance bothersome and
complicated, it is only a childishly easy performance in the way of
making a square of seven rows of seven cards, and then of making
the rows only three cards deep, at most! Crazy superstition and the
aim at mummery have added the details of process that seem
tedious. And, really, they are not ineffective in a drawing-room.

What we read of thus as carefully put together, conscientiously
printed as a thing to be taken with seriousness, in its author's time,
may in our social day serve a lighter end--and ente