It affords a keen delight to youth, a sober pleasure to
manhood, and a perpetual solace to old age. It induces the poor to
forget their poverty, and the rich to be careless of their wealth.
It admonishes Kings to love and respect their people, and instructs
subjects to obey and reverence their rulers. It shows how the
humblest citizens, by the practise of virtue and the efforts of
labour, may rise to the loftiest stations, and how the haughtiest
lords, by the love of vice and the commission of errors, may fall
from their elevated estate. It is an amusement and an art, a sport
and a science. The erudite and untaught, the high and the low,
the powerful and the weak, acknowledge its charms and confirm
its enticements. We learn to like it in the years of our youth,
but as increased familiarity has developed its beauties, and
unfolded its lessons, our enthusiasm has grown stronger, and our
fondness more confirmed.
NOTE. The earliest example of praise and censure of chess strikes
us as very curious and sufficiently interesting to be presented
as illustrating two varieties of Arabian style, and as exhibiting
two sides of the question.
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