counter-marching his host of wooden war- | sary's return, by the latter gallantly waiv

As fixed as marble, with a forehead ridged
And furrowed into storms, and with a hand
Trembling, as if eternity were hung
In balance on his conduct of a pin.

Who, asks he- with a mind well tuned to contemplation would waste attention on the chequered board? The poet would have endorsed Bishop Beveridge's argument:"Either chess is a lottery or not. If it be a lottery it is not lawful if it be not a lottery, then it is not a pure recreation; for it depends upon man's wit and study, it exercises his brains and spirits, as much as if he were about other things. So that being on one side not lawful, and on the other side no recreation, it can on no side be a lawful recreation."

ing his right of execution in the lady's case; an unlooked-for act of generosity utterly overcoming her lord, who, in consequence, lost the game, and handed over the stakes.

soldiers to similar account, as did Frederick the Great and his marshal, Keith, when more serious evolutions were not in hand.

The imaginative Frenchman's game with living chessmen was not entirely evolved from his inner consciousness. An old traveller avows that the kings of Burmah used to play chess in that grand fashion. Describing Akbar's palace at Delhi, in 1792, Hunter says the pavement of one of the courts was "marked out with squares in the manner of the cloth used by the Indians for playing the game called pachess. Here, it is said, Akbar used to play at the game, the pieces being represented by real persons. On one side of the court is a little square apart, in the centre of which stands a pillar supporting a circular chair of stone, at the height of Neither bard nor bishop would have one storey. Here the emperor used to countenanced the good people of Darling- sit to direct the moves." One of Auston and Bishop Auckland in parting with tria's many Don Johns had a room in his their coin to see the vicar and school- palace paved with black and white marmaster of Heighington play chess in Red-ble after the pattern of a chessboard, worth Park; not with wooden warriors, and there played the game with living but with boys and girls, attired in canvas pieces. A duke of Weimar turned his copies of fifteenth-century costumes, figuring on the turfy board as kings and queens, rooks and bishops, knights and pawns. A propos of this novel device for augmenting the Heighington school fund, Some half-century ago a futile attempt a journalist recalled to recollection Adrien to popularize living chess here, was made Robert's story of a like contest on the by opening the Lowther Rooms in West plains of Barrackpore between the chief Strand now known as Toole's Theatre of the Thugs and a representative of for the purpose. The floor was marked John Company. Many attempts had been out as a chessboard, and men and women, made on the latter's life, all of which dressed in appropriate garb, were always proved ignominious failures; owing, as in attendance to serve the use of those the adepts at assassination believed, to who chose to pay a crown for the pleasure the protective powers of an old grey felt of playing chess under such unusual conhat, the favorite head-gear of their foe. ditions. The players sat in boxes overTo obtain possession of ths talisman, and looking the board, directing the moveso put matters on a more equal footing, ments of their pieces. The taking of a the Thug leader challenged the governor man was always preluded by a clashing of to a game at living chess, undertaking to weapons in mimic combat, before the supply him with men, at the charge of captured piece retired from the fray. One twenty-five pounds sterling per man, it who tried his skill at the Lowther Rooms being understood that every man "taken found the battling of the men, and their on either side was to be put to death ther fidgeting about their squares, anything and there. The governor promptly ac- but conducive to the concoction or carrycepted the challenge, staking his old hating out of artful combinations; while he against the surrender of those concerned in the attempts upon his life. After playing for some hours, the Englishman captured his opponent's queen and actual wife, and then adjourned for luncheon, leaving the Thug chieftain in great perturbation of mind regarding his prospective loss, an anxiety relieved on his adver

was in constant expectation of seeing his forces weakened by some piece or pawn taking huff, and walking off the board, regardless of consequences. Neither players or the public took kindly to the new way of playing the old game, and want of patronage brought the experiment to an end in three months' time.

From The Spectator. ROLLING-STONE RAMBLES.

66

BY THE AUTHOR OF A LAZY JOURNEY."

I.

In 1857, Count Platen gave a grand | maiden against miss, and the queen's fancy ball in the Hanover Theatre; open- bishop's pawn of the gallant captain was ing it with a procession of magnificently the third victim. Mackenzie's tenth arrayed living chessmen, who, the parade move, after fine strategic manœuvres, was over, put themselves in position on a gi-a capture of a blue pawn, and three gantic chessboard, to enable two mock moves later his bishop vanquished a magicians to test their powers, and in so stately knight. The panoplied descendoing afford much amusement to the com-dant of Henry the Second, twirling his pany, who watched the varying phases of moustache, sought consolation among the the combat with great interest. charming prisoners behind the wings. Only three years since, Captain Mac- On the twenty-fifth move Delmar made a kenzie and Mr. Delmar played a game at brilliant sacrifice of his bishop, which living chess at the Academy of Music, proved unfortunate, the captain's thirtieth New York. The stage was covered with move giving him checkmate. Doubtless alternate squares of black and white the loser found consolation in the fact Canton cloth, forming a board thirty-two that "the game throughout brought out feet square, surrounded by a red border. very happily the merits of the various The kings wore the costume of Charle- costumes." magne, their jewel-decked robes differing but in color, one donning red, the other blue; their crowns being in one case gold, in the other, silver or what passed for such. Rich dresses "of the historical period" draped the forms of the rivalled queens, and "jewelled coronets sat upon their graceful heads." The bishops wore highly decorated vestments, bore mitres, and carried croziers. The knights, wield- "DID you ever see such a winter as ing heavy pikes, were clad in bright ar- this?" asked one sufferer of another. mor. The rooks were distinguished by "Yes, last summer," was the answer. bearing miniature castles on their heads; And the melancholy epigram was present and the pawns were represented by pretty in my mind the other day, as I looked girls of uniform height, in amazonian listlessly from the window of the Siddons dress, and armed with spears and shields. Club, having returned from my holiday The players sat on raised platforms with outing, upon the usual procession of imtheir chessboards before them, a crier pure particles which make a London atannouncing each move, and pursuivants mosphere; and Wilkins, who never leaves conducting the piece or pawn concerned town, but stays there on purpose to abuse to its proper square. Captain Mackenzie it, asked me, in that tone of unoccupied first called: "Pawn to king's fourth." depression which is peculiar to a club A dainty miss of sixteen, whose long window, whether I had ever seen such a black hair hung loose over her helmet, London fog as that in September. Yes," was led to her square, and when Mr. Del- I said, "this September, on the Italian mar's crier also made the same move, the lakes." For it is true that Mrs. Balbus two misses, standing face to face, sus- and myself had recently visited those pended hostilities for the nonce, and ex- climes of the perennial sun. Years lapse, changed smiles. The following move and I do not like to think how long it is brought the captain's knight to the king's since I chronicled, for the patient readers bishop's third square, and Delmar made of the Spectator, the story of a lazy rama similar move with his knight to his ble through nearer-lying regions, which I queen's bishop's square. Delmar's fourth ventured to describe under fictitious move was the capture of a red pawn by names, for fear of rousing susceptibilities. a bishop. Her rosy cheeks assumed a That was but my humor, which has passed, scarlet hue of mortification at being cap-like most humors, and leaves me in a tured at such an early stage of the game, and as the pursuivant led her off, she pouted petulantly. The pouting was repeated on the sixth move, when Delmar, who seemed to take a great fancy to the pretty pawns, pitted a blue-eyed pawn against a red, and she, too, had to retire. The next move was another match of

66

mood of solid realism. These kind of half-fairy fancies are but the cynthias of a minute, and "no two dreams are like." Terrefolle has assumed to me the common-place guise of France; Feuille-morte and Eau-qui-dort have evaporated in the guide-book into Avranches and Coutances, and giddy and brilliant Trouville asks me

with scorn how I can have dared to para- | by my views. He spoke of imprudent phrase her into Trou-vilain? How a diet, of the habit of servants to throw man's old work seems to jibe at him vegetables down the sink, and so forth, sometimes, as he takes it up, as if to say and for a long time persuasively. The to him, "It isn't you that did me, you garrison held out. The whole household know!" Three years after: and what lived upon brandy-and-water, and nothing changes have passed over the whole men- else. (After I had left, the local winetal and moral frame, gradual ministers of merchant sent me in a magnificent acthe law of growth, forerunners of the count for succulent drinks which I had final change! Illusions have been lived never seen. I resisted him before the down, and hopes have been disappointed: judge of the county, and had to pay. dreamed-of reconciliations have not come My dear sir," said an eminent legal exabout, and short, sharp partings have pert, to console me, "the trick is obvious, come in where none such were feared, to and the books' palpably cooked. But toss about the cards of life in quite an- county-court judges always decide for a other deal. Unexplained estrangements tradesman versus a 'gentleman,'" which have elbowed out old friendships, and is a pleasant reputation for justices to seeming accident has knit again, more sleep on; and I am glad I am not one of strongly than before, former ties which them.) This is parenthesis; but I am had been all unloosed; trusted affections talking of migrations, and I migrated have proved as rotten as tinder, where the from North Bitton on Silverstreak, this hot spark of self has fallen; and honor time guarding a strict anonymous, because has tumbled like a house without founda- it is not a good place for simple-minded tions, when treachery and "expediency," people to live in. At last my cook took vanity and ingratitude, have sprung their to rolling about on the floor in fits, regulittle mines beneath it; till looking back, larly, when she "opened up" the scullery over a three years' space, its moral reads in the morning. And one evening, after as this, that there is nothing certain but various premonitory whiffs, there burst uncertainty. Of what we believed would forth between cod and mutton such an be, nothing has been; of what we pur- overmastering stink, that we literally posed to do, nothing has been done. But packed our clothes and fled into the dark. much has been done that we did not pur-ness, then and there. It was impossible pose; and much has been which we never even for that soliciting landlord, this time, believed in, and nobody knows. Even to persuade me that it was the fish that scientific congresses have made mistakes; smelt. No cod could ever do it, even and only American weather-prophets are there. It was a Saturday night, as I well never wrong. remember; for we picnicked for the Sunday at the house of a comparatively sweet and positively hospitable friend; and on the Monday we departed from the district forever, leaving, as our last contribution, a just action behind us, which, I trust, smells sweet, as in the poem, in spite of surrounding example from the county court downwards.

Can it be I, for instance, that but three years since was dilating on the advantages of living in a valley, and scoffing at those who built their houses upon hills? How soon afterwards was it that the irony of fate avenged the mountaineers, and the pale spectre of typhoid drove us forth bag and baggage, to join the hill faction at once, and, as I now suppose, forever! My landlord he was at once of the legal and house-letting persuasions, and therefore doubly acute was a great admirer of those papers of mine, and for a long time convinced me out of my own mouth (as against my nose), when I suggested smells. The thing was not possible, in so sweet a valley. Moreover, he was one, he said, who had himself lost a thumb through bad drainage, and was sure to be very tender of mine. I have every reason to hope, in the ordinary course of justice, that he has by this time lost the other. I am not vindictive; but, as we said in the Catechism, such is my desire. He persuaded me of many things, assisted

So it was that we left that ancient town upon the river, and found ourselves another home, with all the conditions reversed except as to Conservative members. Our lines are cast this time in a city by the sea, on whose grey-and-blue pattern we look down, from a height above it, over a sloping garden, which provides us with the regulation lawn-tennis ground, circled with a halo of vegetables. are our own landlords, taught by the bitter experience of another's smells. Henceforth, at least, my smells shall be my own, and I will pay no rent for them. The bonny, bright town, which shall be called Sunbourne, lies before us in a tempting maze of tree-planted streets, which recall

We

the green alleys and avenues of certain | about the purse, which were forcible, but foreign cities. They bisect each other at not convincing; and was met throughout odd angles, instead of running in a series by that steady persistency which wins of parallel lines to the water, after the campaigns and civilizes deserts, and com. dull, uncompromising fashion of most passes in lesser matters what it will. And seaside towns. And beautiful bits of so it came about that I found myself comgreen, sudden bursts of unexpected fields mitted to a foreign tour, this time upon and parks, with endless varieties of com- the understanding that we were to reverse fortable and tasteful homes, each to itself our former plan, never stop more than in its own walled garden, and built in all two nights anywhere, and see as many the quaintnesses of parti-colored form lands as could be seen in the space of with which modern architects have exor- four weeks. And so we did. Belgium cised the grim, old barrack-spirit of mo- and the Rhine, Coblentz and the Mosel, notony, leave us but small room to regret Heidelberg and the Neckar, Lucerne and the cottage in the plain, and the enter the Reuss, Verona and the Adige, with a prising, but inventive, wine-merchant, or kaleidoscope of lakes and the climbing of his friend and backer, the county-court many mountains (in railway trains), chase judge. Before us a broad plain of level each other in picturesque confusion marsh, dotted with old castles and new through my brain, like the whirligig of gas-works, and other landmarks upon the spires and towers which, after his famous wrinkled face of Time; and behind us, an visit to Oxford, made havoc with the head amphitheatre of breezy down, stretching of Mr. Verdant Green's papa. its arms out to the sea and folding Sunbourne to its heart, as well it may, in gratitude for the balmiest air and the most perpetual and buoyant sunshine which the spirit of man can crave for; and as a result, I have solemnly recanted to Mrs. Balbus all the theories I formerly expressed as to the proper requisites for a residence; she has said, "Yes, Tom," in each instance in a spirit of unmurmuring adhesion; and I cannot tell how it is that I seem to realize that she fails to attach any serious importance to my opinions. Indeed, she distinctly said, upon one occasion, when I was emphasizing the importance of living on a hill, that "we'd got to do it now, and it didn't matter." Some people have a way of putting things which is fatal to argument.

I attribute it partly to the novelty of the new home, and partly to the Machiavellian craft of which I am a master, that for the three years which have passed since that same lazy journey through the Cider lands, I succeeded in staving off the fatal question of foreign parts. I leaned upon the exquisite pleasure of that former tour, and the pity it would be to spoil its memories; I insisted on the disagreeable characteristics of foreigners, and the alluring qualities of home; I quoted Sir Charles Coldstream on the general inadequacy of the Continent, and his opinion even of the crater of Vesuvius, that there was nothing in it; I appealed to my advancing years (for which I was pulled up somewhat sharply); I pointed out that I had seen it all, to be met by the undeniable counter that other people had not; I used household arguments

It was with a sense of awe due to the occasion, that a day or two ago I took up the Times- no lesser medium would have met the emergency and read therein a letter of some proportions, by a professor of eminent fame, both in the world of science and in that of Alpine enterprise. It was couched in language of much dignity and authority, and the text of it was this. That, on the whole, the weather in Switzerland this summer had not been fine. It was true that this had been for some time freely reported in many prints and in various places, and that a large number of tourists of the baser sort had come to the same conclusion as the professor. But obviously it could not be accepted as a fact till it had received his counter-seal, and it was very good of him to affix, as it were, his black mark to the weather, and to let unscien tific people feel sure that it had really rained. I thought it did at the time, my. self; and now, of course, I know it. When I came to the end of that letter, tears of gratitude stood in my eyes. I do not mean because I had come to the end of it, but from sympathy with the admirable sentiment which wound it up. In spite of its raining in Switzerland-indeed, whilst it was raining the professor had heard how we had been winning in Egypt, and felt called upon publicly to express his devout thankfulness that England was still a nation. It was impossible for me - or, I should think, for England - not to feel this condescen sion on the professor's part all the more, from his having gone rather out of his way to show it, at least to the lay mind.

To the man of science, the connection | ently with nothing to criticise and scibetween the nature of England and the weather in Switzerland may, of course, be clear. But from the outside world, in that letter, that connection was artistically veiled; so much so, that it was impossible to conceive what one fact had to do with the other, except, possibly, that both had occurred to other people before, though they had no authority to mention them. Let me add, however, that the letter was a great comfort to me, because I had just been reading, in the same unerring journal, an article on a text it has been persistently preaching of late, on what may be called the monohippoid or one-horse character of England in the matter of literature. I had derived therefrom the melancholy information that we have no novelists, no playwrights, no humorists, no historians, no poets, and no orators, only a large number of critics - appar.

ence, and the Times. So I, too, lifted
up my voice and wept, and thanked God
that we have still critics to tell us of our
faults, and professors to let us know when
it is raining. How it rained (for I am
bound to confirm the professor, and to
say that it did), I hope to be permitted to
show another day. I remember a dram-
atist who was congratulated on having
obtained the services of a certain actress
for his new burlesque. "Yes," he said,
"I'm lucky. She can't sing, and she
can't dance, and she can't act. And
she's very plain. Otherwise she's de-
lightful." So might I say, that we were
in Switzerland a fortnight, and never saw
the mountains; and in Italy for another,
and never saw the sun. And we ate too
little, and paid too much. Otherwise, it
was lovely.
TOM BALBUS.

THE FOUNDATION OF ALEXANDRIA. En- | tering Egypt at Pelusium, Alexander found his fleet already there. The Egyptians crowded to welcome him, and, leaving a garrison in the city, he marched across the desert to Memphis. Here the satrap Mazakes immediately surrendered himself, and an immense treasure came into the hands of Alexander. The whole of Egypt, indeed, submitted with alacrity, as a relief from the insulting despotism of the Persians. The Macedonian hero rested himself for some time in this ancient and magnificent city, offering sacrifices to the god Apis and the other Egyptian deities, and entertaining the people with gymnastics and musical performances. He then sailed down the western branch of the Nile to Canopus, situated at its mouth. Seeing the advisibility of removing the seat of government from Memphis to some spot upon the coast which would be more within his power, he determined to found a new metropolis on the shores of the Mediterranean. Hence arose the famous city of Alexandria, afterwards one of the most splendid and important capitals of the world-the great seat of commerce for Europe, Africa, and India, and an intellectual centre of the Greek race, which for several ages exercised a powerful influence over the philosophy and religion of the civilized world. Alexander himself

marked out the circuit of the walls, the direction of the principal streets, and the sites of numerous temples, which were to be dedicated to Grecian and Egyptian deities. The site was on a narrow tongue of land stretching between Lake Mareotis and the sea, and the plan of the city was made to include the adjacent isle of Pharos, which was joined to the other part by a causeway. Two harbors were formedone on each side of this causeway-for ships coming by sea; and Lake Mareotis was utilized for the reception of exportable produce from the interior. The nucleus of the population was mainly derived from the neighboring town of Canopus. During the rule of the Ptolemies, Alexandria grew immensely in size, in grandeur, in population, and in wealth. Its museum was celebrated in all civilized lands, and the library of Alexandria (the destruction of which has been the subject of contradictory statements) contained the finest collection of Greek classics in the world. In this most interesting city, the East and West may be said to have mingled as in a common centre; and from the consequent interchange of ideas between the more ancient and the more youthful communities of the world, Christianity itself received some of those elements which rank among the philosophical influences of a later epoch.

Cassell's Illustrated Universal History.