A curious attempt was made in Winchester yesterday week to
revive in England the Oriental fancy for playing chess with living pieces. The object was to raise a certain amount of money for paying off a debt on St. Lawrence's Church, Win- chester, and to help the Winchester Association for the care of friendless girls. So, in the Winchester Guildhall 576 square feet were marked off for a chess-board,---in other words, a square yard was given for each piece,—in squares of white and black cloth; while plenty of room was reserved for spectators, both in the hall itself and in the galleries. The pawns, wearing Tudor hats, were got up in the fashion of pages, the white and black shoes marking their colours; the kings were in great velvet cloaks, with jewelled collars and sword-belts ; the knights had the morions and breastplates of men-at-arms ; the bishops had copes and mitres of white silk, embroidered with gold on one , side of the board, and cassocks and birettas of red silk on the other side ; the rooks had pasteboard castles as head-dresses. And thus several games were played, a trumpet announcing the check of the king, and the players playing at a table, from which their move was immediately translated into the corre- sponding change of living pieces. We should think that it would require the inexhaustible patience of the East, seriously to continue this sort of dumb pageantry for several hours at a stretch.
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