After a slumber of four years Bangs the fresh, the growing, the vigorous, has risen from his lair, and shaking the dew from his mane, has given utterance to a roar that no champion of chess can hear without a shudder. There is no doubt that he has gained at least a pawn in strength since 1868. Dr. Hooker too, the lightning player, now gives where he once received a Castle. Beach has returned to his native heath rich with the experience of Morphy's old haunt the Cafe de la Regence. Hall has toughened his sinews by many a desperate tug with the paladins of New York. Mackenzie himself has felt the force of his genius and gazed on his moves with astonishment. Between the styles of these four great players there is a notable difference. Bangs, like the lion, tears everything absolutely to fragments that comes within the reach of his claws. Hooker, like the eagle, soars screaming aloft sometimes to such a height that he loses himself but only to return with a desperate sense which Bangs himself can hardly withstand. Beach, more like the slow worm, insinuates gradually into the bowels of the enemy making his presence only felt by the effect, while Hall, on the contrary, rushes right onward like the locomotive scattering obstacles to right and left, and treating his antagonist with no more ceremony than if he were a cow strayed accidentally upon the track. ------ BUCKLE'S CHESS REFERENCES Buckle's Chess References, which are not so full as we could wish contain the names of Gerbert (Pope Sylvester, 2) (992, 1003), Cranmer, Wolsey, Pitt and Wilberforce, as chess players, but do not refer in any way to Beckett, Luther, or Voltaire, names mentioned in Linde, neither think of Alcuin, or consider the chess probabilities of the contemporary reigns of Offer, Egbert, Charlemagne, Harun, and Irene. Van der Linde assigns the 13th Century for first knowledge of chess in England, and places it under the head of Kriegspiel, but on what grounds, or what he conceives this Kriegspiel to be, or how it differs from chess does not clearly appear in his book, his space being rather devoted to sneers or dissent from the statements and conclusions of previous writers, than at advancing any distinct theory of his own. He labours much to cast doubts on Charlemagne's knowledge of chess, and to infer that the chess men preserved and considered to have belonged to him, reported upon by Dr. Hyde, F. Douce, and Sir F. Madden, are of comparatively recent date. Einhard, the historian of Charlemagne, he says does not mention chess, Cranmer, Wolsey, Pope, Pitt, Chatham, Fox, Wilberforce, and other well accredited names which interest us are absent from his list, which is surprising, considering his mass of petty detail.