We may, however, put aside the old guesses of early writers, for evidence still exists which sets at rest all doubt that chess was known and played in France in Carlovingian times, and we can understand easily, therefore, why mediæval poets and romance writers so often introduced stories about the game. Some ivory chessmen, six in number, were long preserved in the treasury of the abbey of St. Denis, and the old tradition was that they were given with the chess-table by Charlemagne himself. The greater number of the pieces and the table had been lost for many years, as long ago as 1600. The remainder, transferred at the revolution from St. Denis, are now in the public library at Paris. Sir Frederic Madden, in a very able and learned paper in the Archæologia, says of them: “The dresses and ornaments are all strictly in keeping with the Greek _costume_ of the ninth century; and it is impossible not to be convinced, from the general character of the figures, that these chessmen really belong to the period assigned them by tradition, and were, in all probability, executed at Constantinople by an Asiatic Greek, and sent as a present to Charlemagne, either by the empress Irene, or by her successor Nicephorus.... One thing is certain, that these chessmen, from their size and workmanship, must have been designed for no ignoble personage: and, from the decided style of Greek art, it is a more natural inference to suppose them presented to Charlemagne by a sovereign of the lower empire, than that they came to him as an offering from the Moorish princes of Spain, or even from the caliph Haroun al Raschid, who gave many costly gifts to the emperor of the west.” In the East India museum almost a complete set of ivory chessmen is preserved, perhaps the most ancient examples now known to exist: older even than the chessmen from St. Denis. These were found about twenty years ago, mixed with a quantity of broken pottery, human bones, and other relics, amongst the ruins of some houses excavated on the site of the city of Brahmunabad in Sind, which was destroyed by an earthquake in the eighth century. The pieces are turned; plain in character, without ornament. Several are in a very fragile state, having perished in the same way as the Assyrian ivories; and an attempt should be made to restore, if possible, some of the lost substance. A few fragments of a chessboard were also found, incised with small circles, not interlacing. The chessmen and the squares of the board are black and white: ivory and ebony. The kings and queens are about three inches high; the pawns one inch; and the other pieces are of different intermediate heights. Coins were also found of the caliphs of Bagdad, about A.D. 750.