held at the St. George’s Chess Club Rooms in Cavendish Square, London, in 1851.  Staunton maintained his title to the British Championship until this great International event took place which was signalized by the decisive victory of Prof.  Anderssen, of Breslau.  Staunton made no real effort to recover his laurels afterwards or to in any way reassert English claims to supremacy.  The foreign players, after the Tournament, Szen, Lowenthal, Kiezeritzky, Mayet, Jaenisch, Harrwitz and Horwitz frequented Simpson’s and Anderssen (like Morphy seven years later) greatly favoured the place, and readily engaged in skirmishes of the more lively enterprising, and brilliant description in which he ever met a willing opponent in Bird, who, though a comparatively young player, to the surprise and gratification of all spectators, made even games.  This young player who it seems had acquired his utmost form at this time, also won the two only even games he ever played with Staunton, and also two from Szen, which occasioned yet more astonishment, the last-named having been regarded by many deemed good judges, the best player in the world before the Tournament was held, and even in higher estimation than his fellow countryman Lowenthal, and considered not inferior to Staunton himself.  Judging from the success of this the youngest player who was certainly not superior if equal to Buckle or Boden, it is not unreasonable to conclude that Staunton with his greater experience and skill, had he possessed the same temperament as Bird, and at the slow time limit which suited him as well as it has Steinitz (his exact counterpart in force and style) would have regained his ascendancy for Great Britain.  It is undoubtedly owing to the opportunities at Simpson’s that Boden and Bird so rapidly acquired first rank and the partial withdrawal of the former, and the entire relinquishment of chess by the latter from 1852 to 1858 was unfortunate for English chess renown, for on the appearance of the phenomenon, Paul Morphy, and Staunton’s default in meeting him, there was no English player in practise able to do honor to Morphy over the board, except a new comer, Barnes; and Boden and Bird, but acquiesced in a general wish, (albeit an equal pleasure to themselves) in revisiting Simpson’s to play with the subsequently found to be invincible Morphy.

Simpson’s Divan was naturally the first resort of the incomparable Paul Morphy, and he greatly preferred it to any other chess room he ever saw, he even went so far as to say it was “very nice,” which was a great deal from him, the most undemonstrative young man we ever met with.  Certainly nothing else in London, from St. Paul’s, Westminster Abbey and the Tower to our Picture Galleries and Crystal Palace, not even the Duke of Wellington’s Equestrian Statue, elicited such praise from him as “very nice,” at least as applied to any inanimate object.