whereas the fact is that all they can claim is to have been the first to produce them by some more expeditious method of making. According to the opinion of several _savants_, Laurent Coster of Haerlem was only an engraver of wood-blocks for cards and pictures, before he became a printer of books. It certainly is a fact that wood-engraving, which was for a long time limited to a few studios in Holland and Upper Germany, owed a large share of its progress to the trade in playing-cards--one which was carried on with such activity that, as we read in an old chronicle of the city of Ulm, about the year 1397, “they were in the habit of sending playing-cards in bales to Italy, Sicily, and other southern countries, to exchange for groceries and various merchandise.” A few years later, engraving on metal or copper-plate was employed in producing playing-cards of a really artistic character, among which we may mention those of “The Master of 1466” (Figs. 228 and 229), and by his anonymous rivals. The pack of cards of this engraver exists only in a small number of print-collections, and it is in every case incomplete. As far as we can judge, it must have been composed of sixty cards, consisting of forty numeral cards divided into five series, and twenty picture-cards, being four to each series. The figures are the king, queen, knight, and knave. The suits, or marks, present rather a strange selection of wild men, ferocious quadrupeds, deer, birds of prey, and various flowers. These objects are numerically grouped and tolerably well arranged, so as to allow the numbers indicated to be distinguished at first sight. Thus, as we have seen, playing-cards made their way through Arabia from India to Europe, where they first arrived about the year 1370. Within a few years they spread from the south to the north of the latter country; but those who, under the influence of a passion for play, had so eagerly welcomed them, were far indeed from suspecting that this new game contained within itself the germ of two of the most beautiful inventions ever devised by the human mind--those of engraving and printing. There can be no doubt that playing-cards were in use for many a long year, ere the public voice had proclaimed the almost simultaneous discovery of the arts of engraving on wood and metal, and of printing. [Illustration: Fig. 230.--Coat of Arms of the Cardmakers of Paris.] GLASS-PAINTING.