seeking after military adventures, in which character, he says, it was introduced into the game of Chess.

Sir William Jones says, that the rook is to be deduced from the rat'h of the old Hindoo game of Chess, which was an armed chariot. This the Persians changed into rokh; of which word, he adds, the etymology has in vain been sought for.

The term castle and the French word tour may have arisen from confounding the old French word roc with rocca, a fortress; or the European form of the castle may have been copied in part from the elephant and castle on his back. It is thus described by Vida; and whilst the English, French, Spaniards, and Italians have retained the castle only, the Danes, Germans, and Indians have adopted the elephant without the castle; by the former of which names it is also called by them. By the Poles this piece is also termed the rook; the Russians make it a boat, or rather its keel: Dr. Hyde supposes this to be from its length, or the velocity of its motion; which, he says, in the eastern chess-board, originated from the manner in

which the dromedary travels. The Swedes, according to the same author, call it the leaper, and have made it change places with the bishop. Among Charlemagne's pieces, it is termed the elephant.

THE PAWNS.-These appear to have been always so called among ourselves; and by the French, in the middle ages, paon, paonnet, paonnez, paonniers, poons, poonnes, and pionnes. In the Romance of the Rose they are called garçons. They are all, probably, from pedones, a barbarous Latin term for foot-soldiers; which, in this game, were represented by the pawns. By the Italians they are now called pedone, by the Spaniards peones. The Russians and Poles make them also foot-soldiers. The Germans, Danes, and Swedes have converted them into pea

sants.

The writers of the middle ages, in speaking of the chess-men, universally style them familia or familiæ.

CASTLING. Is the moving the king two squares, leaping over one, either on his

own side or on that of his queen, and placing the castle on the square over which he leaped.

The old way of castling, and which is still used in some countries, was to leave it to the player's option to place his king on any one of the squares of the last row, those of the rooks included. The mode now mentioned is that which is adopted by Philidor. The king can castle but once in the game; and not then even, in case of his either being actually in check, or having before moved, or being exposed to check in passing over any square commanded by an adversary, or with a rook that has been previously moved, or if there is any piece between him and the rook.

The propriety of this arrangement, and of some of these limitations, is strongly called in question, by a late publication, on the grounds, first, that the arrangement is destructive of uniformity; since the king, after having castled, will, if on his own rook's side, stand one square from the end; while on his queen's side he will be two squares: and the writer conceives, that as in the latter case the rook will have to leap

over two squares instead of one, as, on the king's side, the advantage of leaping the additional square might, with more propriety, be given to the king than the rook: and, secondly, that the prohibition from castling, when he is in danger, is as extraordinary as if a general, pressed on all sides, were prevented taking refuge under the guns of a fort; that very interesting situations occur by allowing the king to castle when in check, which cannot under a contrary precaution; and that the prohibiting his passing a square commanded by an adversary is absurd, because not general with respect to the other pieces; and if it were general, "Chess would have a constitution most ingeniously impracticable."

Though I have thus inserted these opinions, the remark I shall content myself with making on the subject is, that in all laws CERTAINTY is the most desirable object; and that a law had better be a little doubtful as to its justice than as to its operation. In the legislation of Chess, Philidor may be considered despotic, and his laws being implicitly adopted by the chess-clubs

in London and Paris, perhaps the inconvenience suffered by following them will be much less than the difficulty would be of making chess-players unanimous on any proposed alteration.

In castling there is the double object, of placing the king in a more secure place, and bringing the rook immediately into play.

MAKING A PAWN A QUEEN, &c.Whenever a pawn has reached the last row of the adversary's end of the chess-board, he may be exchanged for any piece the player pleases, although he has not previously lost one. This is contained in Philidor's IXth Law: but it must be noticed, it has been a subject of much dispute and contradiction, and even Philidor has contradicted himself upon it. Notwithstanding the express law, the meaning of which appears plain and unequivocal, he in a late edition of his Analysis has the following passage:-speaking of, and freely blaming the innovations introduced into play by the Germans, he says, "While this field of criticism lies open, I cannot pass by my own