A review of the dates proves that playing cards were not popular in any part of Europe before the last quarter of the fifteenth century. The Italian record which attributes their derivation to the land of the Saracens is fully corroborated by other testimony of authority. Students of oriental literature assure us that the Saracens were taught the uses of playing cards by the inhabitants of Hindostan, in which country they were invented.[35] Playing cards were made in China from printed blocks long before the game was known in Europe. [p099] The introduction of this oriental pastime in civilized Europe has been attributed to the Moors of Spain, to eastern Jews who traded on the shores of the Mediterranean, to Gypsies who made their appearance in Germany at the beginning [p100] of the fifteenth century. Whether they were introduced by Moor, Christian, Jew or Gypsy is of minor importance. It concerns us more to know how they were received. We have abundant evidence that the cards supplied a universal want, and that they soon became as popular with the poor and ignorant as they had been with the rich and noble. While the Duke of Milan found amusement, as he did in 1415, with a suite of cards elaborately painted by artists of renown on plates of ivory, at a cost of fifteen hundred crowns, and while Flemish nobles were playing at games of hazard with cards engraved on silver plates, the working people of France and Spain, soldiers in Italy, and traveling mechanics in Germany were diverting themselves in wine-shops and public gardens, in huts and by the road-side, with similar games, played with greasy cards which had been printed or stenciled on coarse paper. The cards were adapted to all tastes, and there was a fascination in them which made men neglectful of duty.