430 CHESS-CLUBS AND CHESS-PLAYERS. 



will readily play with any stranger, though some are more fasti- 

 dious. They have always a small stake of a franc or half a franc on 

 the game, many of them turning their skill to good account when 

 they meet with inferior artists. They move in general with great 

 rapidity, at least, until repeated defeats render them more cautious. 

 I remember a gentleman, with the ribbon of the Legion of Honour at 

 his button-hole, assigning as the cause of my success against him, the 

 great slowness with which I moved, though we managed to get 

 through seven games in two hours and a half ! The professors who 

 reckon their skill at chess among the ways and means of providing 

 for current expenses, are very anxious to maintain their reputation, 

 and explain away an unfortunate checkmate by all sorts of excuses. 

 A friend of mine, who is what the fancy call " a tough customer," 

 had beaten one of these gentry two successive games, for the loss of 

 which the professor ingeniously accounted in a variety of ways, and 

 began a fresh attack with undiminished ardour ; but when a third 

 checkmate had dashed his hopes, one would have thought the force 

 of excuses could no further go : the Frenchman, however, was far 

 from that opinion ; he turned to the spectators, and ran over with 

 great volubility, a list of the accidents which had conspired against 

 him : the lights were bad and he could not see ; he had mistaken a 

 bishop for a knight; the noise of the Cafe had confused him; in 

 short, he had lost the game from any and every cause but want of 

 skill. " Je ne manque pas du talent" he exclaimed with great 

 vehemence of gesture, and as long as the by-standers would listen, he 

 continued repeating the same strain of excuses, invariably winding 

 up with his favourite salvo, " Maisje ne manque pas du talent de tout 

 de tout de tout." 



This Cafe was the resort of Phillidor, and contains a portrait of 

 him presented by his son. A treatise (Traite des Amateurs ) was pub- 

 lished some years ago by the players usually frequenting it, chiefly 

 remarkable for a number of games in which odds of different kinds 

 are given ; but I fancy it is not much known in England. Many of 

 the authors afterwards became emigres, and some of them (particu- 

 larly Verdoni) are spoken of by Sarrat as players of considerable 

 skill. 



Among the Germans, Dutch, and Belgians, chess appears to be in 

 high repute. In Amsterdam, there is or was an academy of chess ; 

 in Brussels, it is a common amusement in the Cafes ; and in Ger- 

 many, there is actually a village (Stroenbeck) whose inhabitants hold 

 by a chess tenure ! Their celebrity induced Mr. Lewis to make trial 

 of their skill, which he found by no means of the first order; they 

 seem to have remained in statu quo, since their first institution, and 

 their library is very limited. The account, however, is a curious one ; 

 it will be found at the end of the second part of Mr. Lewis's last 

 work. 



Spain, once so celebrated for her wealth and power, has now sunk 

 into a second-rate kingdom, chained down by a bigotted priesthood : 

 her Alberonis and Ripperdas are no more ; the school of Murillo has 

 few worthy disciples, and the generation of Calderon and Lope de 

 Vega has quite disappeared. Chess-playing seems to have shared in 



