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LETTER LIX.

Cards.--Whist.--Treatises upon this Game. -Pope Joan.-Cards never used on the Sabbath, and heavily taxed.-Ace of Spades.

THE English cards are, like the French, fifty-two in number. They differ from them in the figured cards, which are whole-length, and in the clumsiness of their fabric, being as large again, thick'in proportion, and always plain on the back. Our names for the suits are retained in both countries; and as only with us the names and the figures correspond, and our words for cards (naypes) is unlike that in any other European language, we either invented or first received them from the Orientals.

Gambling, dancing and hunting are as

favourite pastimes among the English as among avages. The latter of these sports must of course be almost exclusively the amusement of men; dancing requires youth, or at least strength and agility; but old and young, hale and infirm, can alike enjoy the stimulus of the dice-box or the card-table.

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Fashion, which for a long time appointed the games in this country, as it does every thing else, seems here at last to have lost its fickleness. Ombre, Basset, and Quadrille had their day; but Whist is as much the favourite now as when it was first introduced. Casino came in from Italy, like the opera, and won over many females; but, like the opera, though it became fashionable it never was fairly naturalized, and whist still continues peculiarly the game of the English people. It suits the taciturnity and thoughtfulness of the national character; indeed its name is derived from whish, a word or rather sound which they make when they would en

join silence*. Not a word is spoken during the deal, unless one of the party, happening to be of irascible temper,should find fault with his partner-for people of the politest manners sometimes forget their politeness and their manners at cards. The time of dealing, if silence be broken, is employed in discussing the politics of the last deal. Whatever the stake may be, the men usually increase it by betting with some by-stander upon the issue of the rubber, the single game, and sometimes the single deal; and thus the lookerson take as much interest in the cards as the players themselves.

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A certain person of the name of Hoyle wrote a treatise upon the game, about half a century ago, and laid down all its laws. These laws, which like those of the Medes and the Persians alter not, are constantly appealed to. Few books in the language, or in any language, have been so fre

* It seems, by this etymology, as if some person had been fooling the author's curiosity.-TR.

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quently printed, still fewer so intently studied. Compendiums have been made of a pocket-size for the convenience of ready reference; these are very numerous; the most esteemed is by Short*. But though these laws are every where received as canonical, an old Welsh baronet who used to play cards six days in the week, and take physic on the seventh, chose some few y since to set up a heresy of his own in opposition. It consisted in reducing the number of points from ten to six, allowing no honours to be counted, and determining the trump by drawing a card from the other pack, so that the dealer had no advantage, and all chance was as far as possible precluded. Whether this was considered as savouring too much of equality and Jacobinism I know not, but he made few proselytes, and the schism expired with him. He himself called it Rational Whist; his friends, in a word of

*The author has mistaken Bob Short for a real fame.-TR.

contemptuous fabrication, denominated it his whimsy-whamsy.

Of the minor games I have only noticed two as remarkable, the one for its name, which is Pope Joan; a curious instance of the mean artifices by which the heretics still contrive to keep up a belief in this exploded fable. They call her the curse of Scotland; so the legend, fabulous as it is, has been still more falsified. The other game is called a fear* ; each person stakes a certain sum, a card is named, and the pack spread upon the table; each draws one in succession, and he who draws the lot loses and retires; this is repeated till the last survivor remains with the pool. The pleasure of the game consists in the fear which each person feels of seeing the fatal card turned up by himself, and hence its name.

Their great poett speaks of an old age

* Un espanto is the original phrase. Not knowing the game, the translator suspects he has not hit the right name.--TR.

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