"If the relative skill of the competitors engaged on each side were to be the gauge by which to estimate the probable result of a contest like this, it would have been easy to predict to which party victory would incline; and we should have wondered at the daring gallantry that prompted the little band of Hollanders to challenge the leviathans of London. Experience, however, has shown that, in a match of chess by correspondence, the battle is not always to the strong, and that foresight and profound calculation are of infinitely less account, when the men may be moved experimentally, than they are in ordinary chess, where conclusions must be tried by the head, and not by the hand. Of this, indeed, the archives of the London Club afford a memorable instance. In March 1824, a proposal was made to this Club by the Club at Edinburgh, to play a match at chess by correspondence for a silver cup; the match to consist of three games, (irrespective of drawn games;) two games to be played together, and the winner of the first game to have the move in the third. The London Club at this period was in the pride and plenitude of its strength, and the committee appointed to conduct the match comprised every name of note among the chess-players of the metropolis. The Edinburgh Chess-Club, on the other hand, was composed of amateurs comparatively unknown and inexperienced, and possessed one player only--the late Mr Donaldson--capable of making anything like a stand 'over the board' with any of the London chiefs. In an ordinary contest, indeed, over the board, it was the old odds of Lombard Street to a China orange! Maugre all the advantages of superior skill and practice, however, the Londoners lost the battle, and lost it by a blunder as ridiculous as it was vexatious, at the very moment, too, when the game was in their hands."