_Knight of Spata._--Thaliessin, the Welch Bard and Poet, dressed like a Herald or King at Arms of the Divine and Ancient Druids, as he sang to King Henry II of the great deeds of Arthur, the justly termed hero of the British Isle, Knight of Cambria." "In the selection which we have made," say the proprietors, "to form our set of court cards, we have chosen them from among those characters who have rendered themselves most conspicuous in the history of the United Kingdom. In this particular, we have had recourse not only to historical truth, which we have rigidly observed, but we have taken care to fix upon personages, who lived at different periods, and which are calculated in colour, variety of dress, and characteristic features, to form an agreeable and elegant contrast, and to avoid that unpleasant monotony which must have taken place if they had all been selected from the same period of time; and it will be a peculiar gratification to us, in our attempts to form a set of cards, should we contribute in the smallest degree, to augment the elegant and rational amusements of taste and fashion. "Nor have we been inattentive to minor objects in our anxiety to complete the plan. We believe it has never been attempted to be explained why the coarse and vulgar appellation of knave, was originally given to the card next in degree to the queen. Perhaps the following demonstration is the most plausible way in which it can be accounted for. It was usual with kings in ancient times to choose some ludicrous person, with whose ridiculous and comical tricks they might be diverted in their hours of relaxation, from the cares and formalities of royalty. This person was generally chosen from among men of low condition, but not wholly destitute of talent, particularly in that species of low cunning and humour calculated to excite mirth and laughter, and the tricks of knavery (in which he was allowed free indulgence in the presence of the king), gave him the appellation of the king's fool, or knave. "Whether this explanation be really the origin from whence the knave in the old cards is derived, may still remain undetermined, but it appears to us the most rational way of accounting for it. Nor is it indeed essential to our present purpose; the name of knave in our opinion is vulgar, unmeaning, and inconsistent, and being moreover absolutely incompatible with the dignity of our characters, and the uniformity of our plan, we have entirely rejected it, and substituted a knight in its stead. This being a title of honour, not only in immediate succession to that of king and queen, but is ever considered as an honorable appendage to royalty itself."