Charles the Seventh, Philip of Burgundy,
Réné of Anjou, and Talbot; and the four
queens by Joan of Arc, Louise of Arc,
Isabella of Bavaria, and Agnes Sorel. There
were cards produced at Frankfort in 1815,
with Wellington as the knave of diamonds,
and Blucher as the knave of clubs: a
compliment which might appear questionable
did we not bear in mind that the knave is
not so designated on the continent. The
Americans have lately produced cards having
Washington, Adams, Franklin, and Lafayette
for the four kings; Venus, Fortune, Ceres,
and Minerva, for the four queens; and four
Indian Chiefs for the four knaves—  as curious
a family party as one may meet in a long
summer's day.

The inside of the carton being formed by
two pasted thicknesses of cartridge paper,
and the face and the back being printed with
the required devices, the paste-brush is again
put into requisition. The four thicknesses
or layers are finally united; and then ensue
such hot-air dryings and such hydraulic
pressings as bring the carton into a very
dense and compact state. Then we come to
the polishing—a process which has taxed the
ingenuity of manufacturers as much, perhaps,
as any other. All the little hillocks in the
paper are to be rubbed down; both surfaces
are to be made beautifully smooth, and yet
one is to be more highly glossed than the
other; for two equally polished surfaces
have a tendency to adhere in a manner that
would interfere with the shuffling and dealing
of cards. The sheets of carton are passed
over a brush-wheel, and are pressed between
heated plates, and are rolled between heated
rollers; they are also pressed in contact with
a roller made of ten thousand discs of paper
compressed with enormous force, and turned
in a lathe to produce a surface of a very
remarkable kind.

But we had almost forgotten the Ace of
Spades: a forgetfulness which the Chancellor
of the Exchequer would not pardon. Every
pack of cards made in England for home use
pays one shilling to Her Majesty; for which
the ace of spades is the printed receipt.
The manufacturer pays for the production
and engraving of a steel plate containing
twenty aces of spades; he also sends paper
to Somerset House; and the authorities
at the Stamp Office print him off thousands
and tens of thousands of aces. These are
sent to him in certain quantities, and under
certain bonds and seals and restrictions. He
proceeds to use them, by pasting the sheets of
aces on carton, and making cards of them.
The Excise Officer calls on him at intervals;
and, for all the sheets of aces which he is not
in a condition to produce, he has to pay one
shilling each ace as duty; and a Government
stamp is pasted round every pack to show
that the duty has been paid. Another steel
plate is engraved with the ace of spades for
export cards, but no duty is paid on these.
As there are men who will try to drive a
coach and six through almost any Act of
Parliament, so are there odd schemes whereby
second-hand cards may be sold over again,
without paying another shilling to the
Government; the cut-corner cards are an
illustration of this.

In cutting the sheets of prepared carton
into cards, whether twenty or forty to a sheet,
a machine is used similar to that with which
bookbinders cut their millboard. There is
a long blade, hinged at one end, and worked
by a handle at the other; the carton is laid
on a flat surface, with certain raised edges for
guidance, and a cut is made with remarkable
cleanness and quickness. The carton is first
cut into strips or traverses, and then the strips
into separate cuts; and so great is the dexterity
acquired by practice that one of the
card-hands at this establishment can cut up
something like twenty thousand cards in a day.

Whether men have such quick eyes and
such nimble fingers as women, is a question
which we will not venture to determine; but
it would seem impossible to excel the speed
with which the very pretty processes of
sorting and examining are conducted. We
forget the technical terms employed;
but the reader must picture to himself a
woman sitting at a table, with heaps of
finished cards before her. She has just taken
a large number, with delicate pink backs;
she spreads them out with a rapidity which
the eye can scarcely follow, and she detects
instantly the slightest difference in tint—a
hundredth part of a shade, for aught we
know. She thus makes up packs in which all
the fifty-two cards have exactly the same
tint. She then examines every part of both
surfaces of every card; if there be no
speck or blemish, the card is laid aside as a
Mogul—a peerless prince; if there be a slight
blemish on one surface, the card is a Harry;
if a little spot on both surfaces, it is a Highlander;
if there be more than two or three
little spots, it is rejected altogether, and becomes
a waste card. Why it is that all doubly
spotted cards should be Highlanders, is a
question of nationality utterly beyond our
power to solve; all we know is, that the
wrappers for the packs have a Mogul, a
Harry the Eighth, and a Highlander, printed
on them, for the reception of the first, the
second, and the third class of cards, respectively;
and that there is a difference in value
of about sixpence per pack between each
class and that next to it. The oddity of the
matter is, that however the card-makers differ
in other particulars, they all adopt these
designations, and all are so disrespectful to the
Highlander as to make him the humblest
member of the triad. But our workwoman
has not yet finished her labours. The examination
of tints leads to one classification; the
examination of maculæ?, or little specks, leads to
another; and there is the sorting of suits and
of numbers, so as to ensure that each pack