"Likewise in playing without seeing the board I have overcome most opponents, nor had they the power to cope with me. I the humble sinner now addressing you, have frequently played with one opponent over the board and at the same time I have carried on four different games, with as many adversaries, without seeing the board, whilst I conversed freely with my friends all along, and through the Divine favour I conquered them all. Also in the great chess, I have invented sundry positions as well as several openings, which no one else ever imagined or contrived." Notwithstanding the accounts and allusions to Blindfold Chess here referred to, it would seem to have been generally unknown to us at the time when Philidor performed his intellectual feat of playing two games blindfold, and one over the board, on several occasions at the St. James Street Chess Club, about a century ago. The club which was held at Parsloes Hotel, was formed in 1770, and its members comprised many prominent, celebrated, and distinguished men: Pitt, Earl of Chatham, C. J. Fox, Rockingham, St. John, Mansfield, Wedderburn, Sir G. Elliott, and other well-known names are recorded among the visitors and spectators there. Whilst the players who contended against Philidor at the slightest shade of odds included Sir Abraham Janssens, the Hon. Henry Conway, Count Bruhl, Mr. George Atwood (mathematician and one of Pitt's financial secretaries), Dr. Black, the Rev. Mr. Boudler, and Mr. Cotter. Stamma, of Aleppo, engaged in London on works of translation, and who was one of the best chess players, was matched against Philidor, but won only one out of eight games. These contests took place at Slaughter's Coffee House, in St. Martin's Lane, long a principal meeting place for leading chess players. Philidor does not seem to have tried more than two games blindfold, but such was the astonishment they caused at the time, that doubts were expressed whether such an intellectual feat would ever be repeated; and certainly from the tenor of press notices of the event, and Philidor's own memoranda, it seems that it could not have been contemplated or conceived that performances on the scale we have witnessed in our days by Louis Paulsen, 1; Paul Morphy, 2; J. H. Blackburne, 3; and Dr. J. H. Zukertort, 4, would become, comparatively speaking, so common in a future generation. The following article, from a newspaper of the period, was thought to reflect with tolerable accuracy the general impression prevailing at the time in regard to these performances.