and almost universal trend that way as at the present time. The race in its poetry, as in its government, science, history, philosophy, and indeed in every element of its civilization, stands nobly by the religion which has made it great. Room for epics is being formed, as Christianity grapples with one after another of our heathen inheritances, and overthrows them, as it has done with abject superstition, Romanism and slavery. We wait the great epic poet who shall sing of these victories, as Milton did of the fall and restoration of man.M. V. B. KNOX, Ph. D.

CURIOSITIES OF CHESS.

THE game of Chess has found its way to us from the far East, and is not akin to any Greek or Roman game of chance. Although its votaries are comparatively few, chess may claim to have been universal, and its board and men have long formed what has been called a common alphabet, the factors of a language understood and enjoyed by men as widely separated as the palanquin-bearer, who reflects how he may best deliver a crushing mate to a pebble King on squares traced on Indian sand, and the Icelandic bishop who sits within his walls of solid snow, and with a block of ice for table, whiles away the tedium of a polar night. Let us briefly trace some of the many sources from which writers have sought to derive its history and origin.

There does not seem to be much to choose between the claim of one Xerxes, a Babylonian philosopher in the reign of Evil-Merodach, and that of Chilo, the Spartan, one of the seven sages of Greece. Some have ventured to ascribe the honor to Palamedes, prince of Euboea, who flourished at the siege of Troy, and who may, therefore, have had ample leisure for the elaboration of a mimic siege. We find from more than one authority that the game may have been invented as a last resource by a general whose soldiers were on the brink of mutiny. It is said that Pyrrhus, king of Epirus, turned it to good account at such a crisis; and that a Chinese mandarin, some nineteen hundred years ago, was able thus to soothe his troops, when they had become clamorous for home, and to reconcile them to their winter-quarters by proposing this amusement for their vacant hours, until, with the return of spring, they could take the field again, better fitted by their friendly contests for the stern realities of war. If, however, we are to believe Chaucer, it was

Athalus that made the game

First of the chess-so was his name

an assertion supported by Cornelius Agrippa, who tells us that Attalus, king of Asia, was an inventor of games. Finally, a manuscript in the Harleian collection gives us to understand that Ulysses (the crafty one) was first in this field. So many have been these claimants, that Herodotus gravely records the fact that the people of Lydia did not profess to have taken any part in the planning of board, or

moves, or men.

We are prepared to find in a game of which the true source is as uncertain as was that of the river Nile, that there have been different methods and manners of conducting it. Thus, in the Hindu game, four distinct armies are employed, each with their King, not ranged in the style of that four-handed chess which has been to some extent revived within the last few years, but shorn of their strength, so that each force consists of half the usual number; and marked by this further peculiarity, that each corps counts among its fighting-men a King, an Elephant, and a Knight, who slay, but cannot be slain. In the Chinese game, which boasts the sounding title Choke- Choo-KongKi (the play of the science of war), a river runs across the centre of the board, which their Elephants (equivalent to our Bishops), may never cross; and there is a fort, beyond whose limits their King may never pass. In the Persian game, the Ferz (our Queen) advances one step forward on the opening move, in company with its pawn, thus taking up a position whence it can review and regulate the general attack. . After this initial move, it can only advance or retreat by one step at a time in a diagonal course.

Though, as we have seen, it is vain to attempt a proof from so many contradictory premises, and we must leave the actual origin of chess an open question, there can be no doubt at all that it dates as far back as any intellectual pastime that is known to us. We must be content to allow China, India, Persia, and Arabia to contend for the honor of having rocked Caissa's cradle, satisfied on our part to know that the Queen of chess, grown to maturity, has held sway in Europe for many a long year. There is in existence a book upon the subject written by a Dominican friar in the year 1200, and we are told on good authority that in 1070, a certain cardinal, of evidently narrow mind, wrote to Pope Alexander II. to report that he had had occasion seriously to reprove a bishop for indulging in a game of chess. The poor prelate pleaded that this was no game of hazard; but his superiors took a sterner view, and ordered him to repeat the Psalter thrice, and to wash the feet of twelve poor persons, in penance for his offence.

To times quite as remote as these we must refer some extremely curious chessmen which were found in 1831 in the island of Lewis, and placed in the British Museum. It seems probable to those who

understand such matters, that these men, which are curiously carved, were made from the tusks of walrus, about the middle of the twelfth century, by some of those hardy Norsemen who then overran the greater part of Europe. The Hebrides were then subject to invasion by the Sea-kings, and were tributaries to the throne of Norway till the year 1266; we may therefore conjecture that these relics of early European chess were part of the stock of some Icelandic trader whose vessel was lost at sea; and that these ivory men, which are of various sizes, and must therefore have belonged to several sets, were washed ashore, and buried by the sand for nearly seven centuries.

Hyde dates the culture of this game on English soil from the Conquest, because, as he points out, the Court of Exchequer was then established; but there is an earlier record which informs us that "when Bishop Etheric obtained admission to Canute the Great upon some urgent business about midnight, he found the king and his courtiers engaged, some at dice, and others at chess." From a similar source, we find that the game was turned to a very practical account indeed in these times, for when a young nobleman wished to gain permission to pay court to the lady of his love, the fond parent commonly made trial of his temper by engaging with him over the chessboard. A ludicrous old print of somewhat later date represents a gardenparty of six ladies and as many gentlemen grouped round a table, at which one of either sex is standing in a most striking attitude pretending to play at chess, while the others amuse themselves in pairs with the langushing deportment of lovers, and seem less interested in the game than an owl which sits upon a rail, with one eye on the board and one upon the company; while three rooks (appropriate birds) are busy in the background with their own affairs.

It does not need the pen of a ready writer to prove to those who are real chess-players, in however humble a degree of excellence, the pre-eminence of chess among indoor games of skill. As a test of temper and patience, it has peculiar merits, though there have been some notable instances in which these good qualities have failed. Is it not recorded for our warning how "John, son to King Henry, and Fulco fell at variance at chestes, and John brake Fulco's bed with the chest-borde; and then Fulco gave him such a blow that had almost killed him?" and in another chronicle how "William the Conqueror in his younger yeares playing at chesse with the Prince of France, losing a mate, knocked the chesseboard about his pate, which was a cause afterwards of much enmity between them?"

Nor are ensamples lacking of the abuse of patience. The same authority who has written of the fiery Fulco gives us the following

account:

"There is a story of two persons of distinction-the one lived at Madrid, the other

at Rome--who played a game of chess at that distance. They began when young, and though they both lived to a very old age, yet the game was not finished. One of them dying, appointed his executor to go on with the game. The method was: each don kept a chessboard, with the pieces arranged in exact order, in their respective closets at Madrid and Rome; and having agreed who should move first, the don informs his play fellow by letter that he has moved his King's pawn two moves; the courier speedily returns, and advises his antagonist that, the minute after he had the honour to receive this, he likewise moved his King's pawn two paces; and so they went on."

It would doubtless have turned the brain of either of these two worthy dons if they could have been present on any of the occasions in recent times when a game has been begun and finished by telegraph between places far apart in the course of a few hours. In conclusion, let us lay before our readers some words of excellent advice published by one Arthur Saul, two hundred years ago, which all chess-players may profitably lay to heart:

"Do not at no time that thou playest at this game stand singing, whistling, knocking, or tinkering, whereby to disturbe the minde of thine adversary and hinder his projects; neither keepe thou a-calling on him to playe, or a showing of much dislike that hee playeth not fast enough; remembering with thyselfe that besides that this is a silent game, when thy turne is to play thou wilt take thine owne leasure; and that it is the royall law so to deal with another as thyself wouldst be dealt withall.”

-REV. A. CYRIL PEARSON, in Chamber's Journal.

CURRENT THOUGHT.

EUROPEAN AGGRESSIONS IN JAPAN.Mr. E. H. House, an American journalist, who has for many years resided in Japan, contributes to the New Princeton Review, a paper on "Foreign Jurisdiction in Japan." After presenting a long list of gross outrages perpetrated by consular authorities-especially by those of Great Britain-he thus concludes:

"If it be supposed that the evils here depicted have been compensated by advantages to the aliens in whose behalf it was first devised, and has since been twisted and tortured out of all resemblance to its early meaning, that idea needs only a candid and not too minute scrutiny to be speedily dissipated. Consular authority, in so far as it pretends to satisfy the requirements of [foreign] society at large, is a sheer imposture. It rests largely upon the assumption that the territory in which it prevails is not Japanese; but supplies no evidence that it is anything else. In a narrow and im

perfect way, each consular establishment may perform a certain service for the particular section of the community which it represents, but its power to watch over the combined interests of the multitude is utterly fictitious. In the estimation of English functionaries the port of Yokohama may be as completely British as if acquired by cession or conquest,' but it is not so regarded by the French or the Germans, or any other of the representative officials there stationed. They, with but a solitary exception, are equally forward in claiming it as their own. Japan undoubtedly has relations with seventeen different nations; but to contend that the open ports belong to all of these conjointly, would lead to worse complications than any yet invented. Each treaty provides for separate tribunals, but it can compel the subjects of only one power to respect these tribunals. No resident is under the control of any consul but his own.