Harun, viz., Al Amin, Al Mamun, the Great Al Mutasem and Al Wathik (the two last contemporary with our Alfred), all cultivated and practiced chess and the strongest inference, and a far more striking one than any yet adduced, is that we got chess during the long reign of Charlemagne, and his Greek, Arabian and Spanish contemporaries, and this might well happen, for Charlemagne knew both Offa and Egbert (the latter personally), and the knowledge becomes somewhat more than a matter of inference, for the Saxon scholar Alcuin was in England from 790 to 793, on a farewell visit after being domesticated in Charlemagne's household as his treasured friend, adviser, and tutor and preceptor in the sciences for more than twenty years, and could not be otherwise than familiar with the Emperor's practice and enthusiasm for chess, in which he may to some extent have shared. Alcuin would certainly have communicated a game like this, in which he knew other civilized people were taking so much interest, to his countrymen. The connecting links of evidence which Sir F. Madden and Professor Forbes have illustrated in Athelstan's and Edgar's reigns, would have been greatly strengthened and confirmed, if they had thought of Alcuin's residence and influence at a court where chess was not only played, but talked about and corresponded upon. Charlemagne's presents included the wonderful chess men which he valued so highly, and with which we are tolerably familiar through the reports of Dr. Hyde, F. Douce, Sir F. Madden, and H. Twiss, and the engravings in Willeman's work, and by Winckelman and Art Journal. These chessmen (still preserved) were perhaps often seen by Alcuin and were possibly also shewn by Charlemagne to the youthful Egbert when in refuge at his court, and on the whole it seems unreasonable to assume that chess was unknown in England after Alcuin's last sojourn, and during Egbert's reign. It may be also that on further consideration of the Roman edict and references to their games, and the accounts relating to the fourth century B.C., many will be indisposed to accept the dictum that Herodotus, Plato and Aristotle meant nothing more than a game of pebbles, when they referred to chess and propounded their theories as to its invention. ------ PERSIA "Khusra Anushirawan" Naushirawan or Chosroes as he is more frequently called, being the Byzantine title applied to him, was King of Persia and reigned 48 years, from 528 to 576 as stated by some authors, or from 531 to 579 according to others. He is described also as Chosroes the Just. The receipt of chess in Persia from India early in his reign, and the great appreciation and encouragement of it, is the best attested fact in chess history, if not really the only one as to which there is entire concurrence in opinion among all writers.