'What's on the cards?' A question common enough when the actual knowledge of the moment does not afford a positive answer; a question, too, which has an origin taking us back to the earliest use of playing cards. But to how many of those to whom playing cards as a means of recreation are familiar is it known what _may_ be found on the cards? Yet upon these "bits of painted cardboard" there has been expended a greater amount of ingenuity and of artistic effort than is to be found in any other form of popular amusement. Pope's charming epic, "The Rape of the Lock," gives us, in poetic form, a description of the faces of the cards as known to him and to the card-players of his time:-- "Behold four kings in majesty revered, With hoary whiskers and a forky beard; And four fair queens, whose hands sustain a flower, Th' expressive emblem of their softer pow'r; Four knaves in garbs succinct, a trusty band, Caps on their heads and halberds in their hand." [Illustration: FIG. 1.] It is not our purpose to historically trace the evolution of cards--this is a subject beyond the reach of the present article--but a look farther afield will give us evidence that during the last three centuries there has been a constant adaptation of cards to purposes which take them beyond their intention as the instruments for card playing only. The idea that playing cards had their origin in the later years of Charles VI. of France may be disposed of at once as a popular error, though it is true that the earliest authentic examples which still exist are parts of the two packs of cards which were produced for the amusement of that King, by the hands of Jacques Gringonneur, and of which seventeen are preserved in the Bibliothèque Nationale of Paris. These are the most early forms of playing cards, and are known as "Tarots" (as distinguished from "Numerals," or cards which have the consecutively marked "suit" signs), and which had evidently a purpose outside the ordinary games of playing cards as known to us. The "Tarot" pack consists variously of seventy-two, seventy-seven, or seventy-eight cards, including the "Tarots," which give them their distinctive name. "Tarot" as a game was familiar three centuries ago in England, but is so no longer, although it has a limited use in other parts of Europe still. One of the "Tarot" cards, of the Bibliothèque Nationale, "La Mort," is shown as the first of our illustrations (Fig. 1). [Illustration: FIG. 2.] [Illustration: FIG. 3.]