Familiar to those who are conversant with the literature of playing cards will be the Knave of Clubs, shown in Fig. 2, which is one of the fragments of a pack of cards found, in 1841, by Mr. Chatto, in the wastepaper used to form the pasteboard covers of a book. These cards are printed in outline from wood blocks and the colour filled in by stencilling, a method employed in the manufacture of cards down to a very few years ago. The date of these cards may safely be taken as not more recent than 1450, and they are most interesting as being coeval with, if not antecedent to, the most early form of printed book illustration as shown in the "Biblia Pauperum."[B] The archaic drawing of the features, with its disregard of facial perspective, and the wondrous cervical anatomy, do not lessen our admiration of the vigour and "go" shown in this early example of the art of the designer and wood engraver. It is in interesting relation to the knaves of a pack of cards to note the curious conservatism which has belonged to them during the last four centuries and a half. In a MS. in the British Museum, written in the year 1377, the monkish writer, in a moralization on the life of man, suggests its resemblance to a game of cards; and he gives us a description and the attributes of some of the cards. Of those which we now know as knaves, he says two of them hold their halberds or arms downwards and two of them upwards--a distinction which is retained on many of the playing cards still manufactured. [Illustration: FIG. 4.] In Fig. 3 we have one of the cards from a series of "Tarots" of Italian origin, also preserved in the Bibliothèque Nationale, and which may be dated about 1470. These are very beautiful in design, and indicate that they were thought worthy of the employment of the highest artistic talent. We have an example of a somewhat more modern date in the Knave of Diamonds (Fig. 4), in which the costume and character point to the early part of the sixteenth century as the period of their production. This also is from a fragment discovered in the boards of an old book--a source which may be commended to the watchfulness of the bookbinder, as the bindings of old books are still likely to provide other interesting examples. [Illustration: FIG. 5]