"The doctor withdrew in great trouble of mind; and hasting back to England, obtained a fresh commission: but being detained some time at the water side for a fair wind, he was prevented from putting it into execution by the news of the queen's death. "This account of the providential deliverance of the Protestants in Ireland from the Marian persecution is attested in the memorials of Richard, Earl of Cork, by the Lord Primate Usher; and in Sir James Ware's MSS.; who also writes that Queen Elizabeth, being informed of the truth thereof by the lord deputy Fitz-Walters, her Majesty was so delighted, that she sent for the good woman, named Elizabeth Edmonds, but by her husband (whom she afterwards married) named Mathershead, and gave her a pension of forty pounds during life, for having saved her Protestant subjects of Ireland." * * * * * Having now laid before the reader a store of facts and speculations on the origin and history of cards, a sketch of the progress of card-playing in different countries in Europe, and a collection of the opinions of several eminent men on the lawfulness of the game theologically and morally considered, together with sundry other matters either naturally, or artificially, associated with cards,--I shall conclude the work by a brief recapitulation of a few of the leading facts and circumstances relating to the origin of cards and the time of their first introduction into Europe. In Hindostan, the tradition is, that cards were known in that country at a remote period,--upwards of a thousand years ago; but I have not been able to learn that they are mentioned in any Hindostanee work of an early date, and I am informed, on the authority of the Sanscrit professor at Oxford, that there is no Sanscrit word for playing cards. This last fact is, however, of but little weight as negative evidence of cards being unknown in Hindostan a thousand years ago; for long before that time Sanscrit had become obsolete as a vernacular language. In China, if any credit can be attached to the two dictionaries, or rather cyclopædias, of the greatest authority in that country, "Dotted Cards" were invented in 1120, in the reign of Seun-ho, and began to be common in the reign of Kaou-tsung, who ascended the throne in 1131. Cards--_Carte_--are mentioned in an Italian work, said to have been composed by Sandro di Pipozzo in 1299; but as the MS. is not of an earlier date than 1400, there is good reason for concluding the word to be an interpolation, seeing that in several works of the earlier part of the fourteenth century, which had been cited to prove that cards were then known in Europe, it has been discovered that the term cards was an interpolation introduced at a later period by a transcriber. The author of the 'Güldin Spil,' a work written about the middle of the fifteenth century, and printed at Augsburg, in 1472, says that he had read that the game of cards was first brought into Germany in 1300. No