Page:A History of Domestic Manners and Sentiments in England During the Middle Ages.djvu/222

 202 Hijiory of T)ome [tic Manners faid he, ' and penance fliall not be refufed.' ' Was it well,' I rejoined, 'was it worthy of the charafter you bear, to fpend the evening in the vanity of cheff-play {in vanitate fcachorum), and defile the hands and tongue, which ought to be the mediator between man and the Deity ? Are you not aware that, by the canonical law, bifhops, who are dice- players, are ordered to be depofed?' He, however, making himfelf a fhield of defence from the difference in the names, faid that dice was one thing, and chefs another 5 confequently that the canon only forbade dice, but that it tacitly allowed chels. To which I replied, 'Chefs,' I faid, 'is not named in the text, but the general term of dice comprehends both the games. Wherefore, fince dice are prohibited, and chefs is not expreflly mentioned, it follows, without doubt, that both kinds of play are included under one term, and equally condemned ?' " This occurred in Italy, and it is evident from it that the game of chefs was then well known there, though I think we have a right to conclude from it, that it had not been long known. There appears to be little room for doubting, that chefs was, like fo many other mediaeval praftices, an oriental inven- tion, that the Byzantine Greeks derived it from the Saracens, and that from them it came by way of Italy to France. The knowledge of the game of chefs, however, feems to have been brought more direftly from the Eafl; by the Scandinavian navigators, to whom fuch a means of palling time in their diftant voyages, and in their long nights at home, was mofl; welcome, and who foon became extraordinarily attached to it, and difplayed their ingenuity in elaborately carving chelT-men in ivory (that is, in the ivory of the walrus), which feem to have found an extenfive market in other countries. In the year 1 83 1, a confiderable number of thefe carved ivory cheff-men were found on the coaft of the Ifle of Lewis, probably the refult of fome Ihipwreck in the twelfth century, for to that period they belong. They formed part of at leafl: feven fets, and had therefore probably been the flock of a dealer. Some of them were obtained by the Britilh Mufeum, and a very learned and valuable paper on them was communicated by sir Frederic Madden to the Society of Antiquaries, and printed in the twenty-fourth volume of the Anhceologia. Some of the bell of them, however, remained