FIG. 31.
FIG. 32.
FIG. 33.
FIG. 34.
Our space forbids the treatment of playing cards under any but their pictorial aspects, though the temptation is great to attempt some description of their use from an early period as instruments of divination or fortune telling, for which in the hands of the "wise man" or woman of various countries they are still used, and to which primary purpose the early "Tarots" were doubtless applied; but, as it is among the more curious of such cards, we give the Queen of Hearts from a pack of the immediate post-Commonwealth period (Fig. 31). The figure is called Semiramis—without, so far as can be seen, any reason. It is one of a mélange of names for cards in which Wat Tyler and Tycho Brahe rub shoulders in the suit of Spades, and Mahomet and Nimrod in that of Diamonds! In the pack we find the Knave of Clubs named "Hewson" (not the card-maker of that name), but he who is satirized by Butler as "Hewson the Cobbler." Elsewhere he is called "One-eyed Hewson." He is shown with but one eye in the card bearing his name, and as it is contemporary, it may be a fair presentment of the man who, whatever his vices, managed under Cromwell to obtain high honours, and who was by him nominated a member of the House of Lords. The bitter prejudice of the time is shown in the story which is told of Hewson, that on the day the King was beheaded he rode from Charing Cross to the Royal Exchange proclaiming that "whoever should say that Charles Stuart died wrongfully should suffer death." Among the quasi-educational uses of playing cards we find the curious work of Dr. Thomas Murner, whose "Logica Memorativa Chartiludium," published at Strassburg in 1507, is the earliest instance known to us of a distinct application of playing cards to education, though the author expressly disclaims any knowledge of cards. The method used by the Doctor was to make each card an aid to memory, though the method must have been a severe strain of memory in itself. One of them is here given (Fig. 32), the suit being the German one of Bells (Schnellen).