CHESS-CLUBS AND CHESS-PLAYERS. 429 



attacks too powerful,, and so far destroys the balance of the game. 

 In Italy also they do not allow you to take a pawn en passant on its 

 first move ; even with us this was a question, until Phillidor gave 

 his authority in its favour, since which time it has been settled be- 

 yond dispute as the uniform practice. A great many good players, 

 in the common sense of the term, rendezvous at Tom's, but the most 

 celebrated are Messrs. Lewis, M'Donald, Keene, &c. especially the 

 former who is a professed teacher of the game, and ranks high as an 

 author, both for his own works and his translations of foreign 

 writers. 



Every one has heard of the match between the London and Edin- 

 burgh Clubs, which bid fair to rival in lengthiness the siege of 

 Troy ; five games in five years is what some people might call slow, 

 and in my opinion, the London Club had better have resigned the 

 silver cup to their rivals long before the fated time expired. There 

 seems to be no intention of undertaking another such enterprize in 

 order to redeem the honour of England ; but there is, at least, the 

 satisfaction of knowing we were beaten by no unworthy antagonists. 



The Edinburgh Club is a highly respectable body, consisting of 

 seventy-five members, of whom Mr. Donaldson is the chieftain ; next 

 in rank, are Messrs. Crawfurd and Murray, cum multis aliis, whom 

 the trump of fame has not heralded so loudly. They meet for the 

 present in a boarding-house in St. Andrew's Square, but this 

 arrangement is, I believe, only temporary, Their rules of play are the 

 same as in the London Club ; in both, the mode of election is by 

 ballot, and visitors must be introduced by a member ; there is an 

 exception in Edinburgh on this last point in favour of officers of the 

 garrison or of ships of war in the road. The club meets every week- 

 day from eleven to eleven ; it has been established about ten years. 

 Soon after its formation, a Dr. Berry presented it with a medal to be 

 worn by the best player, a proud distinction in the eye of a chess- 

 worshipper, far superior to the badge of Waterloo, or the decoration 

 of the three days. Whether the provincial towns of Scotland have 

 taken example by the metropolis, I do not know ; in England there 

 are many societies of the kind, particularly in Liverpool, where the 

 devotion to the game is highly meritorious ; so general is this feeling 

 among the citizens, that chess problems have long occupied a corner 

 in a lively well- written periodical. But what a falling off occurs, 

 when we come in parliamentary phrase " to consider the state of 

 Ireland;" there is no club in Dublin nor elsewhere that I am aware 

 of, and the number of respectable private players is certainly below 

 par ; the Irish, in fact, are engaged in a more absorbing game they 

 use real bishops instead of ivory ones; like Don John, of Austria, 

 they play chess with men. 



If we cross to France, we find the game little practised except in 

 Paris, where a chess-board may occasionally be met with as a varia- 

 tion to the wearisome everlasting dominos. Few spectacles, I think, 

 are more humiliating, than to see a rational being sit night after 

 night for hours together playing gratis at dominos ! But the head- 

 quarters of chess are in the Cafe de la Regence, which is frequented 

 by a number of professors and amateurs, the greater part of whom 



