sary, and this in an angle, they may take or kill him on the right or the left; but the inferior piece never moves out of the strait line, to the right or left, unless he has obtained power of the queen[1].
The fifth piece in the play of the Schaci is called the queen. Her move is from white to black, and she is placed near the king: if she quit his side, she is captured. When she has moved from the black square in which she was first placed, she can go only from square to square, and this angularly, whether she go forward or return; whether she take, or is taken. But if it be asked why the queen is exposed to war, when the condition of a female is frail and unwarlike; we reply, when husbands go out to battle, it is customary for their women and
- ↑ I have thought it useless to translate the very strained application of this game, introduced between each description, but the following illustration perhaps ought not to be discarded. "Virgil, decended from a low Longobard [i.e. German] family, but a native of Mantua, was most renowned for his wisdom, and the excellence of his poetical talent. When somebody accused him of inserting certain of Homer's verses in his work, he answered, "That they were strong men who could brandish the club of Hercules."
