The forthcoming monster chess competition at Birmingham,
from which first class players are excluded can scarcely be deemed
a fitting substitute for our owing International engagement with
any true lover of chess and its friendly reciprocity, and least
of all in the eyes of our foreign chess brethren and entertainers.

NOTE. This monster Chess Contest between the North and the South of
England, represented by 106 competitors on each side, which
terminated in a victory for the South by 53 1/2 to 52 1/2, took
place at Birmingham on Saturday, the 28th January last, and has
occasioned considerable interest among the votaries of the game
and reports pronounce it a great success.

As affording indications of general chess progress, since the
game became a recognized item of public recreationary
intelligence, and the time of the pioneer International Chess
Tournament of all nations, London 1851, the event may be deemed
of some import and significance, as evidence of the vastly
increased popularity of the game, but the play seems not to have
been productive of many very high specimens of the art of chess,
and has not been conspicuous for enterprise or originality, and
if these exhibitions are to take the place of the kind of
International Tournaments hitherto held, much improvement must
be manifested, before they can be deemed worthy substitutes,
even from a national point of view only.

Books on the openings in chess have continued fairly popular,
but it is singular how very little novelty or originality has
been imparted into them. Since Staunton and Wormald's works, and
the German hand-books, the Modern Chess Instructor of Mr.