A collection of playing cards dating from the early "Ludus Cartularum" of the German Middle Ages to the modern bridge deck has been recently presented to the Widener Library by J. E. Whitney '89, who has been collecting the cards for more than 20 years.

The first known historical mention of the gaming pastboards is the reference of a German monk in 1377 to the "Ludus Cartularum", pastime of the kings and nobles. The pack seems to have consisted of 52 cards containing four suits, very much like the cards of the present day. There were ten numbered and three court cards in a deck. The suite marks on the former were very similar to the modern ones, and the latter consisted of a King and two Marshals, the "Obermann" and Untermann", one of whom held a sign upward in his hand and the other a downward sign.

The next reference to cards was in the accounts of the Royal treasurer of Charles VI of France in 1392, where an item appeared for three painted "jeux de carte" for His Majesty. The painter Grinogonneux was commissioned to paint these gorgeous cards, of which there are examples at the Library.

The question has often been raised as to whether Italy was the originator of the game, and the Tarocchi pack of 78 cards has been held by many to be the first version of the modern deck. The Tarocchi consists of 22 Atutti cards and 56 Cartaccie, the latter containing four suits, each with four court cards instead of the usual three. These are the King, Queen, Knight, and Valet. The suit marks are Clubs, Coins, Cups, and Swords, and are held to be symbolic of the four orders of society, the church, the nobility the traders, and the rascal multitude.

The Tarocchi cards bear a relation to the so-called Tarocchi prints, a set of engravings from which the designs on the cards were derived.

An old French pack in the collection bears evidence of having been used for one of the original purposes of cards, that of fortune-teelling. The cards in this pack are covered with weird words and marks scrawled on their faintly colored greasy surface. Another ancient deck from France shows beautifully engraved nobles and ladies on, its court cards, executed with all the finesse of a Holbein or a Durer.

The national suit marks of Germany, as shown by cards in the Whitney collection, were Acorns, Leaves, Hearts, and Bells. These symbols have remained in the modern decks of that country, which are different from those of other nations.

The early Japanese cards in the collection, called "Karuta", were probably first introduceed into that country by the Portuguese navigators of the Middle Ages. The other Oriental games, including the playing sticks of Korea and the paper discs and dominoes of China, are a distinct species from those of the West. The East Indian cards are likewise different, consisting mostly of pictures of the various incarnations of the Hindu gods