of gain. Many excellent mental qualities,
useful in the course of life, are acquired and
strengthened by its assistance, until they become
habitual and ready to serve at the first occasion.
By chess playing we acquire, first, penetration;
secondly, the power of taking in things at a
glance; thirdly, patience; and fourthly, the
habit of not being discouraged by an unfavourable
aspect of circumstances.

According to the large Japanese Encyclopædia,
the Emperor Yao invented chess to aid
in the instruction of his son; others attribute
it to an emperor of China, to serve for the same
educational purpose. In China, young ladies
are taught chess at an early age, as a matter of
course, exactly as in other countries they learn
music and dancing. In Arab harems, chess is one
of the most usual female amusements; whilst
the men pass whole days over the chess-board.

In Teweddowd, or the Learned Female Slave,
a little-known tale belonging to the Arabian
Nights' series, we are told what was a complete
female education, at the beginning of the tenth
century, in the East. After the charmer had
displayed some of her accomplishments, the
caliph, astonished at such a mountain of
knowledge, chose to see her performance at chess, as
a final test of her intellectual perfection. A
first-rate player was summoned, and commanded
to exert his utmost strength. In an instant,
she checkmated him. At the second game, she
gave him a horse (knight) and a rohk (castle);
at the third, the vizier (queen); all which
advantages allowed to her adversary did not
prevent her beating him. The grand player plucked
out his beard by handfuls, tore his clothes—as
if that would do any good—and swore that he
would never play again, so long as Teweddowd
remained in Bagdad.

To raise up a knot of modern Teweddowds, a
Ladies' Chess Club, not long since, was founded
in Philadelphia, U.S. By its regulations, gentlemen
are formally excluded; they are only allowed
to enter the establishment when they come to
fetch the fair combatants home. Smoking in the
rooms (by the ladies?) is strictly prohibited.

Schaccophobists, haters of chess, are less
familiar to the world. Nevertheless, they have
been neither few in number nor low in rank.
Possibly, some people may dislike chess, without
having the courage to say so. Casimir the
Second, king of Poland (died 1194), prohibited
chess. Cardinal Pierre Damian, bishop of
Ostia (died 1072), condemned a bishop of
Florence to recite the Psalter three times
through, to wash the feet of a dozen paupers,
and to pay them each a crown per head, for
having played chess all night in an inn. The
cardinal, however, with monastic ignorance,
included chess amongst games of chance; whereas,
even in games of chance, sk-ill counts for
something. There are people who always win in the
long run. They are either cheats, of whom no
more need be said; or else they are good players
merely. At the year's end, a good player must
have won; because, when he has no trumps in
his hand, he often finds them in his head.

Makrisi, in his Description of Egypt and
Cairo, informs us that several persons in that
cil.y were beaten in the month Rebi, 403 of the
Hegeira, by order of the Caliph Hakem, for
playing chess. James the First of England
would not allow his son, Prince Henry, to learn
chess. Ingold, a Dominican of the fourteenth
century, wrote a treatise in German, comparing
seven different games to the seven deadly sins.
Chess, with him, is the type of Pride, "witness
a certain ecclesiastic, whose skill at chess
rendered him insupportably proud and passionate."
Under the reign of our Edward the Fourth, a
law was enacted, in 1461, prohibiting the
introduction of chess into England. Saint Bernard
was delighted with those mysterious personages,
the Knights Templars, because they held
the game of chess in horror. In 1125, Bishop
Guy threatened to excommunicate priests who
gambled—they would hardly set out their chess-
boards on churchyard tombs. The synod of
Langres forbade ecclesiastics to play chess,
except very rarely an elastic prohibition. The
Provincial Council of Mexico, in 1585, allowed
it to ecclesiastics, provided they did not play in
public, nor in the academies, nor for much money
—an equally elastic permission. Eudes de Sully,
bishop of Paris (died 1208), would not allow his
clergy to keep chess-boards in their houses.

Games of pure skill, like chess, as compared
with games into which chance enters as an
important element, are liable to the objection that
they excite the player's self-esteem too much,
and are apt to convert what ought to be a mere
trifling and temporary interest into a bitter and
long-remembered strife. A good player, who
once happened to be beaten by a youngster
whom he had been accustomed to beat
invariably, never would ask the lad to play again.
The thorn of the beating rankled too deeply.
Franklin, in his work on The Morals of Chess,
remarks on the tendency of the game to render
people irritable by mortifying their vanity; and
a chess-player's vanity is easily wounded: the
wounds, too, are far from easy to heal. Don
Carlos, a famous Spanish chess champion,
travelled in Portugal, Italy, Holland, and France.
Everywhere victory attended his steps. ln
Paris, he made the acquaintance of a Demoiselle
Minette, who often played chess with a certain
abbé. The abbé was so ungallant as always to
win. To find favour in Minette's eyes, the don
taught her to beat the abbé. Shortly
afterwards, he received a challenge, which he
accepted. His adversary was masked, and, for
the first time, he met with his master.
Completely prostrated by this check to his career,
he retired into a convent, where, after the lapse
of six months, Minette went to fetch him,
declaring herself to be his vanquisher.

In the Four Sons Aymon, another romance
belonging to the Bibliotheque Bleue, we read
that when the barons went out of doors, after
dinner, to divert themselves, Berthelot,
Charlemagne's nephew, called for Regnault, the eldest
of the Four, to play at chess. The men were
of ivory, and the board—the most important