The

group as the simpler classic draughts, where the man is taken between two adversaries. In modern Europe the older games of this class have been superseded by one on a different principle. history of what we now call draughts is disclosed by the French dictionary which shows how the men used to be called pions, or pawns, till they reached the other side of the board, then becoming dames, or queens. Thus the modern game of draughts is recognised as being, in fact, a low variety of chess, in which the pieces are all pawns, turned into queens in chess-fashion when they gain the adversary's line. The earliest The earliest plain accounts of the game are in Spanish books of the Middle Ages, and the theory of its development through the medieval chess problems will be found worked out by the best authority on chess, Dr. A. van der Linde, in his Geschichte des Schachspiels.

The group of games represented by the Hindu tiger-and-cows, our fox-andgeese, shows in a simple way the new situations that arise in board-games when the men are no longer all alike, but have different powers, or moves. Isidore of Seville (about A.D. 600) mentions, under the name of latrunculi, a game played with pieces of which some were common soldiers (ordinarii), marching step by step, while others were wanderers (vagi). It seems clear that the notions of a kriegspiel, or war-game, and of pieces with different powers moving on the chequer-board, were familiar in the civilised world at the time when, in the eighth century or earlier, some inventive Hindu may have given them a more perfect organization by setting on the board two whole opposing armies, each complete in the four forces, foot, horse, elephants, and chariots, from which an Indian army is called in Sanskrit chaturanga, or "four-bodied." The game thus devised was itself called chaturanga, for when it passed into Persia it carried with it its Indian name in the form shatranj, still retained there, though lost by other nations who received the game from Persia, and named it from the Persian name of the principal piece, the shah, or king, whence schach, eschecs, chess. According to this simple theory, which seems to have the best evidence, chess is a late and high

development arising out of the ancient draught-games. But there is another theory maintained by Professor Duncan Forbes in his History of Chess, and prominent in one at least of our chess handbooks, which practically amounts to saying that chess is derived from backgammon. It is argued that the original game was the Indian fourfold-chess, played with four half-sets of men, black, red, green, and yellow, ranged on the four sides of the board, the moves of the pieces being regulated by the throws of dice; that in course of time the dice were given up, and each two allied halfsets of men coalesced into one whole set, one of the two kings sinking to the position of minister, or queen. Now this fourfold Indian dice-chess is undoubtedly a real game, but the mentions of it are modern, whereas history records the spread of chess proper over the East as early as the tenth century. In the most advanced Indian form of pachisi, called chupur, there are not only the four sets of different-colored men, but the very same stick-dice that are used in the dice-chess, which looks as though this latter game, far from being the original form of chess, were an absurd modern hybrid resulting from the attempt to play backgammon with chess-men. This is Dr. van der Linde's opinion, readers of whose book will find it supported by more technical points, while they will be amused with the author's zeal in belaboring his adversary Forbes, which reminds one of the legends of mediæval chess-players, where the match naturally concludes by one banging the other about the head with the board. It is needless to describe here the well-known points of difference between the IndoPersian and the modern European chess. On the whole, the Indian game has substantially held its own, while numberless attempts to develop it into philosophers' chess, military tactics, &c., have been tried and failed, bringing, as they always do, too much instructive detail into the plan which in ancient India was shaped so judiciously between sport and science.

In this survey of games I have confined myself to such as offered subjects for definite remark, the many not touched on including cards, of which the precise history is still obscure. Of the conclusions brought forward, most are no

doubt imperfect, and some may be wrong, but it seemed best to bring them forward for the purpose of giving the subject publicity, with a view to inducing travellers and others to draw up minutely accurate accounts of all undescribed games they notice. In Cook's Third Voyage it is mentioned that the Sandwich Islanders played a game like draughts with black and white pebbles on a board of 14 by 17 squares. Had the explorers spent an hour in learning it, we should perhaps have known whether it was the Chinese or the Malay game, or what it was; and this might have been the very clue, lost to native memory, to the connection of the Polynesians with a higher Asiatic culture in ages before a European ship had come within their coral reefs.

It remains to call attention to a point which this research into the development of games brings strongly into view. In the study of civilisation, as of so many other branches of natural history, a theory of gradual evolution proves itself a trustworthy guide. But it will not do to assume that culture must always come on by regular unvarying progress. That, on the contrary, the lines of change may be extremely circuitous, the

history of games affords instructive proofs. Looking over a playground wall at a game of hockey, one might easily fancy the simple line of improvement to have been that the modern schoolboy took to using a curved stick to drive the ball with, instead of hurling it with his hands as he would have done if he had been a young Athenian of B.C. 500. But now it appears that the line of progress was by no means so simple and straight, if we have to go round by Persia, and bring in the game of polo as an intermediate stage. If, comparing Greek draughts and English draughts, we were to jump to the conclusion that the one was simply a further development of the other, this would be wrong, for the real course appears to have been that some old draught-game rose into chess, and then again a lowered form of chess came down to become a new game of draughts. We may depend upon it that the great world-game of evolution is not played only by pawns moving straight on, one square before another, but that long-stretching moves of pieces in all directions bring on new situations, not readily foreseen by minds that find it hard to see six moves ahead upon a chess-board.-Fortnightly Review.

66

IN the winter of 1860, as I sat alone, writing, in what David Gray described as the dear old ghastly bankrupt garret at No. 66", Lucinda from the kitchen came panting upstairs with a card, on which was inscribed the name of "Sydney Dobell ;" and in less than five minutes afterwards I was conversing eagerly, and face to face, with the man who had been my first friend and truest helper in the great world of letters. It was our first meeting. David Gray, whom Dobell had assisted with a caressing and angelic patience, never knew him at all, but was at that very moment lying sick to death in the little cottage at Merkland, pining and hoping against hope for such a meeting. How about Dobell?" he wrote a little later, in answer to my announcement of the visit. "Did your mind of itself, or even against itself, recognise through the clothes a man-a poet? Has he the modesty and makehimself-at-home manner of Milnes?" What answer I gave to these eager inquiries I do not remember, nor would it be worth recording, for I myself at that time was only a boy, with little or no experience of things and men. But even now, across the space of dull and sorrowful years, comes the vision of as sweet and shining a face as ever brought joy and comfort this side of the grave; of a voice musical and low, "excellent" in all its tones as the voice of the tenderest woman; of manners at once manly and caressing, bashful and yet bold, with a touch of piteous gentleness which told a sad tale of feeble physical powers and the tortured sense of bodily despair. I saw him once or twice afterwards, and had a glimpse of that fellow-sufferer, his wife. He was staying with some friends on the hills of Hampstead, and thither I trudged to meet him, and to listen to his sparkling poetic speech. I recall now, with a curious sense of pain, that my strongest feeling concerning him, at that time was a feeling of wonder at the gossamer-like frailness of his physique and the almost morbid refinement of his conversation. These two characteristics, which would be illNEW SERIES.-VOL. XXX., No. 1

comprehended by a boy in the rude flush of health and hope, and with a certain audacity of physical well-being, struck me strangely then, and came back upon my heart with terrible meaning now. Combined with this feeling of wonder and pity was blended, of necessity, one of fervent gratitude. Some little time previous to our first meeting, I had come, a literary adventurer, to London; with no capital but a sublime self-assurance which it has taken many long years to tame into a certain obedience and acquiescence. About the same time, David Gray had also set foot in the great City. And Sydney Dobell had helped us both, as no other living man could or would. For poor Gray's wild yet gentle dreams, and for my coarser and less conciliatory ambition, he had nothing but words of wisdom and gentle remonstrance. None of our folly daunted him. He wrote, with the heart of an angel, letters which might have tamed the madness in the heart of a devil. He helped, he warned, he watched us, with unwearying care. In the midst of his own solemn sorrows, which we so little understood, he found heart of grace to sympathise with our wild struggles for the unattainable. a period when writing was a torture to him, he devoted hours of correspondence to the guidance and instruction of two fellow-creatures he had never seen. To receive one of his gracious and elaborate epistles, finished with the painful care which this lordly martyr bestowed on the most trifling thing he did, was to be in communication with a spirit standing on the very heights of life. I, at least, little comprehended the blessing then. But it came, with perfect consecration, on David Gray's dying bed; it made his last days blissful, and it helped to close his eyes in peace.

At

No one who knew Sydney Dobell, no one who had ever so brief a glimpse of him, can read without tears the simple and beautiful Memorials, now just published, of his gracious, quiet, and uneventful life. Predestined to physical martyrdom, he walked the earth for fifty years, at the bidding of what to our im

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