masters did not disdain to employ their genius to illustrate the pack of cards. In consequence there are some fine designs beloved by collectors and exceedingly rare. Some of the woodcuts after designs in the style of Lucas Cranach are of particular beauty, depicting Acorns and Leaves with Chevaliers in contemporary costume about 1510. Erhard Schön is known to have engraved a pack of cards with suits of Flowers, Pomegranates, Leaves, and Roses, and a portion of this pack is attributed to Hans Sebald Beham. But for delightful designs those of Jost Amman of the sixteenth century claim recognition by reason of their strong and virile line. They were engraved on wood and published at Nuremberg in 1588. There is some reason to suppose that these cards were not actually put to the common use of play, but remained unpublished as cards, being the dream pack of the designer. The suits are Books: Printer's Inking Balls, Wine Cups (displaying fine goldsmiths' designs), and Goblets of glass or faience. The suits are unusual, and possibly this acted detrimentally to their practical adoption. No cards have been found with these actual designs. In general, apart from all fanciful designs, the pack as we now know it with its designs, has a long lineage and its evolution can readily be traced. The illustration of a Queen from a fifteenth-century French pack shows the heraldic character which has been since adopted. The full-length figure has now been modernized by cutting the figure half-way and having the coat cards with two heads, that is with a design on half the card. Whichever way the card is taken up the design is the same. This no doubt is practical from a playing point of view, but it cheats the card of its artistic possibilities. A Knave of Diamonds, illustrated (p. 189), inscribed Rohant, is from a fifteenth-century pack whose fellow Knaves are inscribed, Lancelot of Clubs, Hogier of Spades, and Valery of Hearts. This card has the hare which was earlier one of the suits, and the piebald and grotesque character of the costume is a feature. This has disappeared from the later representations of the Knave or varlet. In his Four Knaves, Samuel Rowlands (1612-13) tilted at the designs of knaves on the current English pack of cards. He desired them to be brought up to date in costume. He complained of their archaic style. He makes the knaves speak for themselves : We are abused to a great degree, For there's no Knaves so wronged as are we, To brave it out, and follow fashion still In any cut, according to the time, But we poore Knaves (I know not for what crime), Hundreds of years: this hardly can be borne. And the versifier goes on to prove that the French fashion adopted by the English at a remote period has stayed as a permanent feature. He ignores the delightfully heraldic character of the pack. But no matter. He pours out his grievance : "Put My sleeves are like some morris-dauncing fellow, My stockings idiot-like, red, greene, and yellow. He demands modernity for the pack. us in hats, our caps are worne thread-bare." He demands "standing collars, in the fashion" and shootshings," and French doublet and Spanish hose. "Let us have rapiers," says the critic of design: Put us in bootes, and make us leather legges This brochure apparently had some effect, for cards of a subsequent date certainly had garters with ribands and leather boots with spurs. to Seventeenth-Century Cards. In regard England, the seventeenth century has provided packs which appeal to the collector for another reason. Political caricatures were used on cards. to a great extent, and at a time when the revolution shook the country. There is little doubt that the Puritans abominated cards, as being included in the forbidden pastimes in which royalists indulged. Cromwell's Ironsides are probably the only great body of troops who never resorted to cards in their idle moments. Tracts and bitter broadsides were written against cards and written in sporting terms. For instance "A Bloody Game of Cards, played between the King of Hearts |