It will be difficult for them to comprehend
how, amid the wreck of nations, the destruction of races, the
revolutions of time, and the lapse of centuries, this mere game
has survived, when so many things of far greater importance
have either passed away from the memories of men, or still exist
only in the dusty pages of the chroniclers. It owes, of course,
much of its tenacity of existence to the amazing inexhaustibility
of its nature. Some chess writers have loved to dwell upon the
unending fertility of its powers of combinations. They have
calculated by arithmetical rules the myriads of positions of which
the pieces and pawns are susceptible. They have told us that a
life time of many ages would hardly suffice even to count them.
We know, too, that while the composers of the orient and the
occident have displayed during long centuries an admirable
subtility and ingenuity in the fabrications of problems, yet the
chess stratagems of the last quarter of a century have never been
excelled in intricacy and beauty. We have witnessed, in our day
contests brilliant with skilful maneuvers unknown to the sagacious
and dexterous chess artists of the Eighteenth century.
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