LITMIR.BIZ

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is an author, whom it is very difficult to follow in his devious course; for though he is always picking up something that appears to relate to his subject, he yet does not seem to have had any clear idea of what he was seeking for. The grand questions, he says, are, "Where do cards come from; what are they; what do they say; and what ought we to think of them?" These questions, however, Mons. Leber, by no means undertakes to answer. He confines himself, as he says, to a very narrow path—a very crooked one too, he might have added—avoiding the wide and flowery field of conjecture, but diligently amassing facts to guide other inquirers into the origin and primary use of Playing Cards. He is certain that they are of ancient origin, and of Eastern invention; and that primarily they constituted a symbolic and moral game. He professes to be guided in his researches by the evidence of cards themselves; but though a diligent collector of cards of all kinds, he does not appear to have been successful in extracting answers from his witnesses. They all stand mute. In short, Mons. Leber, notwithstanding his diligence as a collector of cards, and his chiffonier-like gathering of scraps connected with them, has left their history pretty nearly the same as he found it. In the genuine spirit of a collector, he still longs for more old cards—but then, how to find them? Such precious reliques are not to be obtained by mere labour; they turn up fortuitously, mostly in the covers of old books, and as none that have hitherto been discovered explain their origin and presumed emblematic meaning, it is a chance that the materials for a full and complete history of Playing Cards will ever be obtained. "In the mean time," says Mons. Leber, "we must wait till this work of time and perseverance shall be accomplished." [12] To interpret his words from his own example, "to wait," may mean, to keep moving without advancing, like a squirrel in a wheel. Notwithstanding all the old cards that have been discovered, and all that has been collected on the subject, from both tale and history, "how far are we from possessing," exclaims Mons. Leber, "and who shall ever amass, all the elements necessary for a positive history of playing cards." [13] Thus much may serve by way of introduction, and as evidence of the "capability" of the subject.

Man, as a gambling animal, has the means of indulging in his hopeful propensity, as soon as he has acquired a property either real or personal, and can distinguish odd from even, or a short straw from a shorter. The first game that he played at, in the golden age of happy ignorance, would naturally be one of pure chance. We have no positive information about this identical game in any ancient or modern author; but we may fairly suppose, for no one can prove the supposition to be false, that it was either "drawing lots," or guessing at "odd or even." [14] Imagination suggests that the stakes might be acorns, or chesnuts; and though reason may "query the fact," yet she cannot controvert it. It is evident that at either of the two simple games above named, a player, when it came to his turn to hold, might improve his chance of winning, by means of a little dexterous management, vulgarly called cheating, and thus, to a certain extent, emancipate himself from the laws of blind Fortune—a personification of chance which a gambler, most assuredly, first elevated to the rank of a divinity. [15] That cheating is nearly coeval with gaming, cannot admit of a doubt; and it is highly probable that this mode of giving an eccentric motion to Fortune's wheel was discovered, if not actually practised, at the first regular bout, under the oaks of Dodona, or elsewhere, before the flood of Thessaly. [16]

Man, having left the woods for the meadows, progressing from the sylvan or savage state to that of a shepherd, now not only roasts his chesnuts, but also eats a bit of mutton to them; and after having picked the leg clean, forms of the small bones, between the shank and the foot, new instruments of gaming. Taking a certain number of those bones, three for instance, he makes on four sides of each a certain number of marks: on one side a single point, and on the side opposite six points; on another side three points, and on the opposite four. Putting these bones into a cow's horn, he shakes them together, and then throws them out; and accordingly, as the points may run high, or as the cast may be of three different numbers, so does he count his game. [17] Conventional rules for playing are now established; definite values, independent of the number of points, are assigned to different casts; some being reckoned high, while others are counted low, and sometimes positively against the player, although the chance of their turning up be the same as that of the former. The game now becomes more complicated; and the chances being more numerous, and the odds more various, a knowing gamester who plays regularly, and makes a calculation of the probability of any given number, or combination of points, being thrown, either at a single cast, or out of a certain number, has an advantage in betting over his more simple-minded competitors. "Luck is all!" exclaims the novice—and guesses; the adept mutters, "Knowledge is power,"—and counts.

      The cutting of bones into cubes, or dice, and numbering them on all their six sides, would probably be the next step in gaming; and there are grounds for supposing that the introduction of dice was shortly followed by the invention of something like backgammon; a game which affords greater scope for calculation than dice, and allows also of the player displaying his skill in the management of his men. Should it be asked, what has any of those games to do with the origin of cards? I answer, in the words of an Irish guide, when pointing out to a traveller several places which he was not wanting to find—"Well, then, none of them's it."

      The next game, which it seems necessary to notice, is the Πεττεια of the Greeks, and the Latrunculi of the Latins; as in the sequel it may perhaps be found to have some positive, though remote, relation to the game of cards. It would be superfluous here to inquire if the game of Πεττεια, or Latrunculi, were really that which was invented by Palamedes during the Trojan War; it may be sufficient to remark, that it is mentioned by Homer, who, in the first book of the Odyssey, represents Penelope's suitors playing at it:

      "Before the door they were amusing themselves at tables,

Sitting on the skins of oxen which they themselves had killed." [18]

In whatever country the game may have been invented, or however it may have been originally played, it was certainly not a game of chance. It was a scientific game requiring the exercise of the mind, and wholly dependent as to its result on the comparative skill of the two players; he who displayed the greatest judgment in moving his pieces, according to the rules of the game, being the winner. [19]

This game appears to have been similar to that described in Strutt's 'Sports and Pastimes,' under the name of Merrels, which is still played in many parts of England, and which was, and may be still, a common game in almost every country in Europe. It appears to have branched out into several species, with the Greeks and Romans; and though, in some of them, the game was very intricate, it yet never attained with those people to the perfection of chess. One of those varieties of Petteia, or Latrunculi, seems to have been very like the game of draughts; it was played with pieces or men, of two different colours, placed on a board divided into several squares, and a man of one party could be taken by the opponent when he succeeded in inclosing it between two of his own. [20]

      Whatever may have been the origin of chess, it seems to be generally admitted that the game, nearly the same in its principles as it is now played—with its board of sixty-four squares, and men of different grades—was first devised in India; and, without giving implicit credit to the well-known account of its invention by an Indian named Sissa, we may assume that the date assigned to it, namely, about the beginning of the fifth century of the Christian era, is sufficiently correct for all practical purposes: a difference of two or three hundred years, either one way or the other, is of very little importance in a conjecture about the game, as connected with Playing Cards. Having now arrived at Chess, we fancy that we see something like "land," though it may be but a fog-bank

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