CHAMBERS'S INFORMATION FOR THE PEOPLE. 



to be found, as well as those of billiards, upon the 

 walls of every room where it is played. 



The best billiard-tables, furnished with slate 

 bed and india-rubber cushions, cost from 70 to 

 80; or even more. 



Bagatelle. 



The large and inconvenient size of billiard- 

 tables has led to the introduction of bagatelle- 

 tables so named from their comparatively small 

 size. A bagatelle-table is usually about seven feet 

 long and twenty-one inches broad ; it is lined 

 with cloth. The game is played with balls and a 

 cue or mace. The balls are small ivory spheres, 

 and the game mostly consists in striking one 

 or more into holes at one end of the board. To 

 perform this and other feats, some skill and 

 experience are required, and the game is far from 

 unarnusing in a cheerful parlour circle. Of late 

 years, bagatelle-tables have become very common 

 in the houses of the middle-classes ; they possess 

 the recommendation of being purchasable at a 

 small expense. Parlour-billiard tables are now 

 much used, the game being exactly billiards in 

 miniature. They are made so as to be quickly 

 and easily put up and taken down, and removed 

 at pleasure. 



GAMES WITH CARDS. 



Playing-cards are small oblong pieces of paste- 

 board, on which divers figures are impressed in 

 two principal colours red and black. Fifty-two 

 cards form a pack, or complete set for playing any 

 game. The pack consists of four suits or kinds 

 of cards, thirteen in each, distinguishable by their 

 respective marks. The suits are hearts, diamonds, 

 clubs, and spades. Hearts and diamonds are red ; 

 clubs and spades are black. The thirteen in 

 each suit consist of ten cards, distinguishable by 

 spots or pips, from one to ten ; and three cards, 

 ordinarily called court-cards, from being impressed 

 with certain figures having a semblance of court- 

 costume one of these is the king, another the 

 queen, and a third the knave or jack. 



On the origin of playing-cards and the significa- 

 tion of the different markings, we extract the 

 following from a writer in Chambers's Journal 

 (September 12, 1857) : ' In the chess of Hindustan, 

 Chaturaji the four rajahs or kings the ingenious 

 Sir William Jones discovers the germ of that 

 which delighted the heart of Mrs Sarah Battle 

 more than ten centuries afterwards. In what 

 manner, and at what precise time, coloured cards 

 took the place of carved figures, and the whist- 

 table elbowed out the chess-board, is not known ; 

 but a pack of Hindustanee cards in the possession 

 of the Royal Asiatic Society, and presented to 

 Captain Cromline Smith in 1815 by a high-caste 

 Brahmin, were declared by the donor to be 

 actually one thousand years old ! " Nor," quoth 

 the Brahmin, " can any of us now play at them, 

 for they are not like our modern cards at all." 

 Neither, indeed, do they bear any remarkable 

 resemblance to our own, the pack consisting of no 

 less than eight suits of divers colours, the kings 

 being mounted upon elephants, and the viziers, or 

 second honours, upon horses, tigers, and bulls. 



'In -the Chinese dictionary called Ching-toye- 

 tung, it is asserted that dotted cards were invented 

 in the reign of Seun-ho, 1120 A.D., and devised 



682 



for the amusement of his numerous wives : there 

 are thirty cards in each of these packs, three suits 

 of nine cards each, and three single cards superior 

 to all the others. The name of one of the suits is 

 Kew-ko-ivan that is to say, nine ten thousands 

 of kwan, strings of beads, shells, or money ; and 

 the titles of the other two are equally concise and 

 sensible. These cards, however, have an advan- 

 tage over those of Hindustan in being oblong 

 instead of circular ; both, however, are remark- 

 able for being emblematic in a very high degree ; 

 some of the Hindu packs illustrating the ten 

 avatars or incarnations of the deity Vishnu ; and 

 the so-called " paper-tickets " of the Chinese 

 typifying the stars, the human virtues, and, in- 

 deed, almost anything you please. Cards do not 

 appear to have been known in Europe until 

 towards the end of the fourteenth century. " In 

 the year 1379," writes Carelluyzo, "was brought 

 into Viterbo the game at cards, which comes from 

 the country of the Saracens, and is with them 

 called nai&j" whence afterwards, perhaps, Jacka- 

 napes, Jack of Cards. In 1393, this entry occurs 

 in the accounts of the treasurer of Charles VI. 

 of France : " Given to Jacquemin Gringonneur, 

 painter, for three packs of cards, gilt and coloured, 

 and variously ornamented for the amusement of 

 the king, fifty-six sols of Paris." 



' Card-making grew to be a regular trade in Ger- 

 many soon after this, where it, as well as card-paint- 

 ing, seems to have been for some time carried 

 on exclusively by females ; the wood-engraving of 

 cards, however, did not begin until some time after- 

 wards. The pips were then very prettily imagined, 

 the suits consisting of hearts, bells, acorns, and 

 leaves. The place of her majesty the queen was 

 filled by a knight or superior officer ; and it is to 

 Italy, and not to Germany or France, that the 

 glory of giving place aux dames at all must be 



conceded The signs upon Italian cards, 



which seem to have been the first imported into 



England, were cups, swords, money, and clubs 



The French, from whom we derive our ordinary 

 suits of diamond, heart, spade, and club carreau, 

 coeur, pique, and trefle were continually chang- 

 ing their court-cards, and representing on them 

 all sorts of historical characters. 'In the earlier 

 periods, their kings were Charlemagne, Cassar, 

 Alexander, and David, or Solomon, Augustus, 

 Clovis, and Constantine ; about all of whom and 

 their followers, Pere Daniel has the most ingenious 

 information to offer. Troops, says he, however 

 brave and numerous, require to have prudent and 

 experienced generals. The trefle, a clover plant 

 which abounds in the meadows of France, denotes 

 that a chief ought always to encamp his army in 

 a place where he may obtain forage for his 

 cavalry ; piques and carreaux signify magazines 

 of arms which ought ever to be well stored the 

 carreau being a sort of heavy arrow shot from a 

 cross-bow, and which was so called from its head 

 being squared (carr/) ; caurs, hearts, signified 

 courage of both commanders and soldiers ; and 

 so on to any amount.' 



With the entire pack of fifty-two cards, or with 

 only a portion of it, there have been innumerable 

 games, and there are so still ; to notice the whole 

 of these, however, would occupy too much of our 

 space, and we propose to confine our explanations 

 to what are considered respectable and harm- 

 lessly amusing games. 



