It requires very great application to play it well: and let a man
be ever so expert, he will be apt to fall into mistakes if he
thinks of anything else, or is disturbed by the conversation of
those that look on. It is a game of three, with 40 cards, that
is, rejecting the eights, nines, and tens of all the suits.
'In a passage from Evelyn's Memoirs, the writer impressively
describes another Sunday-evening scene at Whitehall, a few days
before the death of Charles II., in which a profligate assemblage
of courtiers is represented as deeply engaged in the game of
Basset. This was an Italian game, brought by Cardinal Mazarin to
France; Louis XIV. is said to have lost large sums at it; and it
was most likely brought to England by some of the French ladies
of the court. It did not stand its ground, however, in this
country; Ombre continuing the fashionable game in England, down
till after the expiration of the first quarter of the last
century.
'Quadrille succeeded Ombre, but for a curious reason did not
reign so long as its predecessor. From the peculiar nature of
Quadrille, an unfair confederacy might be readily established, by
any two persons, by which the other players could be cheated.
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