432 CHESS-CLUBS AND CHESS-PLAYERS. 



is an idea I hold to be utterly absurd. What reason can there be 

 why the results of other men's brains should not be available in chess 

 as in other things ? If, indeed, a person learns a set of moves by 

 rote, and starts with no other stock in trade, he can hardly expect to 

 succeed against the worst player, who depends on his own resources. 

 Such a noodle, neither books nor any thing else, will ever convert 

 into an artist. It is extraordinary, too, what false notions people 

 have of their own skill. A man who, in his own confined circle, can 

 find " no enemy to fight withal," fancies he is invincible ; and I have 

 frequently been daunted by a reputation, which a single game has 

 proved to be utterly unmerited. 



Some years ago, Mr. Kempelen's chess automaton excited uni- 

 versal attention; it was so incredible, that functions manifestly intel- 

 lectual could be performed by a machine, that every one was con- 

 vinced there was an imposture ; yet so ingenious were the means of 

 deception, that no one could form any plausible theory by which to 

 explain the juggle. The whole plan is now completely laid open, 

 and may be found in Sir David Brewster's work on Natural Magic : 

 the details cannot but gratify the curious, from their extreme and 

 artful ingenuity. 



A great singularity relating to the game, is the fact stated by a Pa- 

 risian lecturer, that maniacs, or, rather, persons afflicted with mono- 

 mania, have been known to play chess with the same skill as when 

 perfectly sane ! 



The preference which Franklin gives to cards over chess, can only 

 be considered a piece of special pleading intended to display the in- 

 genuity of the advocate. Chess is not merely a pastime : to excel 

 in it, requires the habitual exercise of powers of combining and cal- 

 culating to as great a degree as in the study of the mathematics ; and 

 if these last are cultivated by many, not for the practical use to be 

 made of them in after-life, but solely for the habits of reasoning they 

 tend to produce, why should not chess be encouraged with the 

 same views, and with the additional advantage of amusing while it 

 instructs ? There is no danger that it will lead to gambling, and 

 still less to other excesses. Chess players, in fact, have long formed 

 a temperance society, whose members religiously confine themselves 

 to coffee and cigars : and though there are many who think cards an 

 abomination, yet chess has ever been excepted from the rigid inter- 

 dict of the most fastidious puritan. It must be admitted, however, 

 that it frequently affects the temper unfavourably: there is an intel- 

 lectual inferiority in defeat, extremely galling to some minds, which 

 often gives rise to feelings of hatred and dislike, almost incredible. 

 The following is a remarkable instance ; and the reader may be as- 

 sured that it is no fiction, but actually occurred to a relation of my own. 



During the war in India, by which the Company's territories were 

 extended so far beyond their hopes, by the talents of the extraordinary 

 men who conducted their affairs, the number of adventurers to the 

 East was enormous ; but as the fatigue of military duties destroyed 

 a great part, and as India was really at that time an advantageous 

 lottery to those who could bear the climate, cadets frequently re- 

 turned in a few years with fortunes of considerable amount, and re- 



