scope for prevarication, assertion, and counter-assertion! Is a special case for the appeal to be drawn up? then who is to settle it? Is it to be by agreement of the parties? and what, if they cannot agree? Is it to be settled by the judge, whose decision is appealed against? For there being no record, it appears to us that, what with disputed fact, and disputed law, and disputed issues as to the one or the other being raised, the mere settling of the case would prove a sort of distinct trial of itself interposed between the original hearing and the appeal. And one thing is evident, that time and expense will be involved in the business, with a minimum of satisfaction, that will be material drawbacks on the score of justice, cheapness, and speed. And if a trial de novo, in which the parties are to proceed without reference to what passed in the inferior court, is to take place, it had been every way preferable to let the parties go there at once; where perhaps the thing had been, like nine cases out of ten, settled at the writ, as the certainty of the result, and the nature of the procedure gave no scope for speculating at a trifling cost for the chance of catching a verdict, through the vague, and hurried, and irregular course of things in the inferior court for many cases, very simple at Westminster Hall, as there presented, sifted by the pleadings, had been complex and perplexing, if presented in the rough by the parties themselves, or their attorneys vivá voce before a judge in the county court, who would be obliged to perform in a sitting what had, in the other case, been done by the litigants at full leisure, and with mature deliberation, in the course of months: the case, with its evidence and points, and conflicting statements in the mass, continually shifting under him like a quicksand.

Many other topics we had willingly urged, but they would swell our paper to a pamphlet; and our limits oblige us, somewhat abruptly, to conclude with the fer

vent wish that no measure so disastrous to our judicial system, and the ultimate welfare of the community, as the extension of the county courts' jurisdiction, may ever receive the sanction of the legislature.

T. E. COUR.

VIII.

A STEAMBOAT PARLEY ABOUT CHESS.

[Reprinted from "Tomlinson's Chess-Player's Annual for 1856."] ILE getting the better of me, I resolved on an appeal to the sea. Hamburgh was my first thought, but the weather, being unusually fine,

drew me northward, where that commodity is of the scarcest, and where things look not so pleasantly under other conditions.

One Wednesday evening in June accordingly found me on the Scotch steamer leaving St. Catherine's Wharf for Edinburgh. The night was used up in dropping down the river, and in sleeping, which, where one has the knack of it, may be as well done in a berth as a bed-two things, however, by no means synonymous, as those who have not the knack will do well to remember. The morning found us coasting it, I know not precisely where; for to my shame be it confessed, my interest in that sort of thing is not very lively. The general coup d'œil is enough for me, and I usually find sufficient within eyeshot to occupy and please me, without those frantic appeals to the telescope that are so common, and the philosophy of which may perhaps be explained on the supposition, that things grow in value as they grow invisible; else whence that eagerness to decipher St. Paul's from some impossible distance, when you will hardly look at it from Ludgate Hill?

And within eyeshot there was much which it were needless to inflict on the reader, to whom the sunshine, and the blue sky, and the sailing clouds, and the dancing waves, and the strong-winged birds that ply about them, though pleasant to see, might be flat in the telling. Suffice it that the weather was bright, and the water smooth, and the vessel steady, and everybody free from that, which is so sad to feel and painful to witness; where the unseasoned voyager is at buffets with himself, and out of sorts with everything a quarrel which Poseidon alone can settle, reducing the sufferer to a state in which, with Hamlet, "Man delights not him, nor woman neither," so weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable," for the time at least, "the uses of the world" appear.

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The passengers were grouped about the deck, chatting together, or lolling over the bulwarks watching the water, as it swept past them, or looking forwards to see what was ahead, or sternwards eyeing the vessel's wake, which, broad and unbroken, stretched to the horizon, marking our prosperous course.

In this state of things I heard a gentleman challenge another to chess; a favourite game with me, whether as a player or looker-on, and I accordingly drew near to witness the approaching battle. The challenger went below to obtain the materials; but presently returned with the intelligence, that there was a board, but no men. The duello was therefore impossible, but the incident occasioned a conversation upon the subject of chess, and with some diversity of opinion; so that a good-humoured quasicontest arose, in which several took part, instead of two only. For there was the challenger, a graduate of Dublin University, and his intended antagonist, a clergyman, I believe, of the Scotch Church, and past the middle age; and there was a good-humoured man from the MidLothian, who may have been a gentleman-farmer, but was

certainly courteous, well informed in general matters, and thoroughly up in all that pertains to the agricultural; and lastly, a disciple of Galen, who had been out of sorts, and was trying how far a sea-voyage would assist him in fulfilling the injunction, "Physician, heal thyself."

The dialogue began with the graduate's expression of regret at missing his expected game.

"You are fond then of the amusement, sir?" said the Lothian.

"Indeeed I am," answered the graduate; "and did my skill but match my liking, I should make no mean professor of the noble science."

"Science!" exclaimed the Lothian with surprise; “but, however, I see your fondness for chess in the exaggeration, or you would not call it a science."

"And why not? You would not style it an art?"

"No, surely; for that belongs rather to the savoir-faire of him whose lathe produced the men, than to his who handles them."

"Then, once more, why not a science?"

"Because it is of no use. Skill, that can be turned to no account, can scarcely rank as a science," said the Lothian.

"But are you sure," rejoined the graduate, "that it is of the essence of a science that it should be useful?"

"Well, I will be sure of nothing in these times, when the main business seems to be correcting the blunders of the past; being myself moreover among the incorrigibles."

"You may be right there," replied the graduate, laughing; "but these times favour your present argument more than those times; for, among the ancients, it was no solitary opinion that deemed utility degrading to science. The essence of philosophy with them was, that it should be for its own sake that men love knowledge, and not for

the uses it might be applied to; and which were, in general, regarded as derogatory to the dignity of wisdomloving. Was it not so, sir?" continued the graduate, appealing to the clergyman.

"It was," said the latter; "and a grave error to boot, and little suited to the forked animal, that has to be clothed and fed. The error operated painfully enough, and was, perhaps, one element of the little progress made in the applied sciences in those days, as compared with modern times, when the spinning-jenny is found to be no unworthy daughter of the pure mathematics."

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Exactly so," resumed the graduate. "But in our respect for the utility of science, we need not confuse speech, and grow inaccurate in our anxiety to be laudatory. Utility is clearly not of the essence of science, however just a criterion of its value."

"By that criterion, then, let it be judged," said the "Admitting chess to be a science, I reject it as

Lothian.

useless."

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"If, by useless, you mean that the effects of the study are limited to the bare pleasure of the student, without any immediate benefit to others, you state no more than what is applicable to other sciences, in their relation to many who study them. For, after all, what is science in the hands of the bulk of those who pursue it, but not professionally? I have friends who botanize, and have done so for years past; but am not aware of their adding a single discovery to the science, though daily advancing in acquaintance with what is already known. Others put in for entomology, and are strong in butterflies, and moths, and grubs, and have transferred a world of knowledge from books, where any one may get at it, to their brains, where the enjoyment will die with them. Beetles are the

enthusiasm of some, and shells are the rage with others, who are daily adding to their collections, employing their

H