If you wish to see what influence chess can have upon individuals, just analyze the London Club. The members are not "men of straw," but sound, substantial citizens, with balances at their bankers heavy enough to buy up half-a-dozen lords. Does a Rothschild or a Baring negotiate a loan? Here you will find men to take up the greater part, if not the whole of it. Is capital for a railroad wanted? You need not wander much further. Look around you, and you will recognize many of the foremost of Great Britain's merchant princes; men pushing England's commerce into every bay and inlet of old ocean, carrying the British flag across seas and lakes, and penetrating continents; causing British cannon to thunder at the gates of Pekin, and opening Japan to the commerce of the world. These are the children of the men who first planted foot in Hindostan, descendants of those who established England's colonies. These are the men, the very men, who repealed the Corn Laws in 1846, established the principle of Free Trade, and told a proud, titled aristocracy--"We, the middle class, the merchants, bankers, and manufacturers of Great Britain, are the source of all power in England, as we are the source of her greatness." An admirable demonstration of these ideas is to be found in the London Chess Club. This association has flourished with never-failing vigor since its establishment in 1807, whilst Clubs have risen, waned, and died at the fashionable end of the town. City men are too patriotic and too proud to allow their Club to languish; and, depend upon it, whilst the old London counts a single member, that one last man will, from his own purse, find funds to keep it alive, inscribe on his colors "_Lateat scintillula forsan_," and shout with stentorian lungs for recruits.