It is among the middle
and humbler classes that the spread of a taste for chess has been
most apparent, with the fashionable or higher classes, so far as
any manifestation of public interest or support is to be taken as
a criterion, its appreciation has died out, and for twenty noble
names among its patrons in Philidor's time, we cannot reckon
one in ours. Another singular feature is the grave diminution
in the recognized number of able exponents, commonly called
Masters, which in the British list are reduced to less than a
third of the well-known names of 1862. The support of chess,
trifling as it is, comes from about a score of Her Majesty's
subjects, and the total in a year does not now equal a sum very
usual in a glove fight, or a Championship Billiard match, and
the sums provided in a generation by our present machinery would
not equal the value of one Al Mamun's musk balls or the rewards
to Ruy Lopez for a single match.
The time allowed for consideration of the moves in chess, and
the management of the clocks used to regulate such is a most
important element in estimating the relative strength of chess
players.
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