We hardly perceive how the name of tables disappeared. It seems probable that at this time the game of tables meant simply what we now call backgammon, a word the oldest mention of which, so far as I have been able to discover, occurs in Howell’s “Familiar Letters,” first printed in 1646. It is there written _baggamon_. In the “Compleat Gamester,” 1674, backgammon and ticktack occur as two distinct games at what would have formerly been called tables; and another similar game was called Irish. Curiously enough, in the earlier part of the last century the game of backgammon was most celebrated as a favourite game among country parsons. Another game existing in the middle ages, but much more rarely alluded to, was called _dames_, or ladies, and has still preserved that name in French. In English, it was changed for that of _draughts_, derived no doubt from the circumstance of _drawing_ the men from one square to another. Our cut No. 155, taken from a manuscript in the British Museum of the beginning of the fourteenth century, known commonly as Queen Mary’s Psalter (MS. Reg. 2 B. vii.), represents a lady and gentleman playing at dames, or draughts, differing only from the character of the game at the present day in the circumstance that the draughtsmen are evidently square. [Illustration: _No. 155. A Game at Draughts._] [Illustration: _No. 156. Cards in the Fourteenth Century._] The mediæval games were gradually superseded by a new contrivance, that of playing-cards, which were introduced into Western Europe in the course of the fourteenth century. It has been suggested that the idea of playing-cards was taken from chess--in fact, that they are the game of chess transferred to paper, and without a board, and they are generally understood to have been derived from the East. Cards, while they possessed some of the characteristics of chess, presented the same mixture of chance and skill which distinguished the game of tables. An Italian writer, probably of the latter part of the fifteenth century, named Cavelluzzo, author of a history of Viterbo, states that “in the year 1379 was brought into Viterbo the game of cards, which comes from the country of the Saracens, and is with them called _naib_.” Cards are still in Spanish called _naipes_, which is said to be derived from the Arabic: but they were certainly known in the west of Europe before the date given by Cavelluzzo. Our cut No. 156 is taken from a very fine manuscript of the romance of “Meliadus,” in the British Museum (MS. Addit. 12,228, fol. 313, v^o), which was written apparently in the south of France between the years 1330 and 1350; it represents a royal party playing at cards, which was therefore considered at that time as the amusement of the highest classes of society. They are, however, first distinctly alluded to in history in the year 1393. In that year Charles VI. of France was labouring under a visitation of insanity; and