Al Walid, 705-715; Harun, 786-809; the great Al Mamun, 813 to 833; and Tamerlane, 1375 to 1400, are monarchs who honoured their chess opponents when beaten. Charlemagne, 768-814, seems also to have taken defeat good-humouredly, and Queen Elizabeth, who liked chess, philosophised upon it. Canute, William the Conqueror, and Henry the Eighth, like the famous Ras, of Abyssinia, whom Salt and Buckle inform us of, preferred to win. Chess, as it is now played, came down to us from the Fifteenth century, when the queen of present powers was introduced, and the extensions and improvements in the moves of the bishops and the pawns and in castling effected, and which made the game exactly what it now is. It has been so practised for four hundred years without the slightest deviation or alteration, and with so much continued satisfaction and advanced appreciation that any change or modification suggested, however trifling, has been at once discouraged and rejected, and additions proposed in the 17th century (Carrera), 18th (Duke of Rutland), and 19th (Bird) were regarded with no favour, and the objection that the game was difficult enough already. During the present century (especially in the second half) chess has become vastly popular. The game is innocent and intellectual, and affords the utmost scope for art and strategy, and for its practice we have about five hundred clubs and institutions, compared with the one club in St. James' Street, and Slaughter's, in St. Martin's Lane, which existed in the last century, during the height of Philidor's career, and two of the first half dozen. Chess clubs started found rest on Irish soil, the first so early as the year 1819. ------ PHILIDOR, BORN 1726, DREUX, NEAR PARIS, DIED 1795, IN LONDON. Philidor's ascendancy and popularity in the last century, owing to his remarkable and perhaps unprecedented supremacy combined with the liberality of his treatment and the chivalry and enthusiasm of his opponents, tended to create an entirely new era in chess and its support. An interest became aroused of a most important character, unknown in any previous age in England, and which, though not fully maintained after his death, and least of all among the higher classes who ranked so largely among his patrons, was yet destined to have a marked and lasting influence on the future development and progress of the game, most apparent at first in England, but later nearly equally manifested in Germany, since in America and other countries, and not exclusively confined to any country, class, or creed. Several auspicious circumstances had greatly contributed to aid Philidor in his London career. Prominent among which were his introduction to Lord Sandwich at the Hague. His patronage through the same source by the Duke of Cumberland and the never ceasing liberality of General Conway, the inestimable Count Bruhl, the Dowager Lady Holland, and the gallant Sir Gilbert Elliot of Gibraltar fame.